VATICAN (AFP) – Pope Francis gathers bishops from around the world at the Vatican this week for a hotly-awaited summit on tackling the wave of child sex abuse scandals assailing the Catholic Church.
The heads of around 100 bishops’ conferences from every continent will convene from Thursday to Sunday for the meeting, with victims’ groups demanding that a concrete action plan on fighting pedophilia be drawn up.
The Pope, who asked the bishops to speak to victims of abuse in their respective countries before the Rome convention, has tried to dial down “inflated expectations” for a cure-all.
The conference aims to be an opportunity to improve awareness of the global phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors within the Church, despite many in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East being in denial of what they call “a Western problem.”
In many parts of the world, discussing violence towards children and even sex is taboo, leading the Vatican to organize this week’s “educational” gathering.
Some abuse victims, particularly from countries where their plight is ignored, have also been invited to attend.
“Someone who has met a victim, heard their cries for help, their tears, their psychological and physical wounds, can’t remain the same,” said German Jesuit priest Hans Zollner, a psychologist who travels the world educating priests and is one of the conference’s organizers.
“The Catholic Church has been faced with this problem for the last 35 years,” he said, hailing rigorous preventative measures taken in Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, and the United States. “It works: The number of new accusations of sexual assault in all these countries is now minimal,” he said.
The aim is for the heads of the world’s episcopal conferences to achieve “a feeling of collective responsibility” said Fr. Federico Lombardi, who will be leading debates during the conference.
“The credibility of the Church is at stake,” he said.
The summit comes after Pope Francis defrocked a former cardinal – American Theodore McCarrick – over accusations he sexually abused a teenager 50 years ago.
McCarrick, 88, who resigned from the Vatican’s College of Cardinals in July, is the first cardinal ever to be defrocked for sex abuse.
Chilean Vatican expert Luis Badilla said the meeting would be a “decisive moment for the pontificate.”
“We want this meeting to result in concrete measures,” he said, echoing victims’ hopes for the conference, being held in the wake of pedophile scandals that have shaken the Church particularly in Chile and in the United States.
