Close to 400 priests were defrocked in only two years by the former Pope
Benedict XVI over claims of child abuse, the Vatican has confirmed. The
statistics for 2011 and 2012 show a dramatic increase compared to previous
years, according to a document obtained by the Associated Press. The file was part of Vatican data collected
for a UN hearing on Thursday. It was the first time the Holy See was publicly
confronted over the sexual abuse of children by clergy. Church officials
at the hearing in Geneva faced a barrage of hard questions covering why they
were withholding data and what they were doing to prevent future abuse. Victims’
advocates complained there was still too little transparency.
The
flood of allegations, lawsuits and official reports into clerical abuse reached
a peak in 2009 and 2010, which observers say may explain the spike shown in the
document. The Holy See is a signatory to
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a legally binding instrument
which commits it to protecting and nurturing the most vulnerable in society. It
ratified the convention in 1990 but after an implementation report in 1994 it
did not submit any progress reports until 2012, following revelations of child
sex abuse in Europe and beyond.
Last month, the Vatican
refused a request from the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child for data
on abuse, on the grounds that it only released such information if requested to
do so by another country as part of legal proceedings. In a homily on Thursday,
Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, called abuse scandals “the shame of the
Church”.
He announced in
December that a Vatican committee would be set up to fight sexual abuse of children in
the Church
Source: PUNCH N.P
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