2023-09-22 22:34:35
After the revelation of cases of sexual abuse in the ranks of the Catholic Church, the Swiss Bishops’ Conference wants to set up an ecclesial criminal and disciplinary tribunal. This court will have to deal with sanctions in the event of violation of Church law.
Swiss civil criminal laws would continue to have priority and the criminal prosecution authorities would be required to be involved in all cases of abuse or other offenses committed or having been committed in the ecclesial context. The ecclesiastical court would also take care of the necessary sanctions in the event of violation of an ecclesiastical law, we can read in a press release from the Swiss Bishops’ Conference (CES) on Saturday morning.
In order to make the establishment of such a national tribunal a reality, the Swiss bishops are seeking to meet with Vatican officials in the coming weeks, we read further.
Other measures considered
The three principals of the study by the University of Zurich, which recently revealed the extent of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Switzerland, – the ETUC, the Roman Catholic Central Conference of Switzerland (RKZ) and religious communities Roman Catholics of Switzerland (KOVOS) – have taken additional measures. Among these, the continuation of this study by the two historians from the University of Zurich who carried out the pilot study.
A national service for collecting victim reports will be set up, continued the ETUC. And the members of the CES have signed a personal commitment so that all ecclesiastical archives under their responsibility remain accessible and that no document is destroyed.
The CES has once once more decided to introduce an in-depth psychological evaluation procedure for seminarians and candidates for the novitiate as well as for other pastoral agents. This assessment procedure already exists in many regions, but it will now be standardized and professionalized nationally and will be mandatory everywhere. The personal files of all pastoral collaborators will be professionalized. The CES wants to implement these measures by the end of 2024 at the latest.
Documented abuse
In their pilot study published on September 12, researchers from the University of Zurich identified at least 1,002 cases of sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy and Catholic religious since 1950. According to the researchers, these are not only the tip of the iceberg, as most cases were not reported and documents destroyed.
According to the results of the study, abuse was committed by 510 people out of 921 victims. Nearly 56 percent of the victims were men. The perpetrators were, with a few exceptions, men. In 74 percent of cases, the victims were minors.
The report documents acts of abuse ranging from problematic boundary crossings to the most serious systematic abuse, involving rape, lasting for years. Many cases were passed over in silence, concealed or minimized by the Catholic Church, declared one of the authors of the study.
This article was automatically published. Source: ats
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