2023-05-05 16:48:01
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis tried to buoy his embattled child protection advisory board Friday, following weeks of turmoil sparked by the latest resignation of a founding member and fresh doubts regarding his leadership.
Francis urged his Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors to seek a “spirituality of reparation” with abuse survivors and build a culture of protection to prevent priests from raping and sexually abusing children.
In particular, he praised the commission’s efforts to establish Church child protection programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where there are fewer funds than in the United States and Europe.
“It is not right that the most prosperous parts of the world have well-trained and well-financed shelter programs, where victims and their families are respected, while in other parts of the world they suffer in silence, perhaps rejected or stigmatized when they try to come forward to reveal the abuse they have suffered,” Francisco said.
The pope announced the creation of the commission in 2013 to provide advice on best practices to combat sexual abuse in the Church. The commission has gone through several iterations since then, most significantly with resignations by members frustrated by Vatican bureaucracy’s resistance to their recommendations and exasperated by the commission’s unclear mandate and model.
The most recent departure was that of the Rev. Hans Zollner, a German Jesuit who runs a child protection institute at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University. In a scathing March 29 statement announcing his resignation, Zollner identified a number of internal problems at the commission that he said made it impossible for him to remain.
He cited a lack of financial accountability, a lack of transparency regarding decision-making, and a lack of clarity regarding what members are supposed to do and how they are appointed.
Zollner’s criticisms underscored broader questions regarding the purpose and direction of the commission, which has never found its place in a Vatican bureaucracy inherently resistant to change and particularly defensive on the issue of abuse.
Francis recently placed the commission under the auspices of the Vatican’s Dicastery (department) for the Doctrine of the Faith in an attempt to give it institutional legitimacy. But even that has created problems. Critics point out that placing the commission under the Dicastery, where all abuse cases are prosecuted, was akin to putting a victims’ advocacy group inside a federal court.
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