“There are victims who have never dared to speak because there are bishops who do not believe in these things, so you can say: ‘Look, there have not been enough victims who have spoken.’ I tell you that I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t care and the victims were central.” Juan Carlos Cruz, one of the victims of the pedophile Karadina in Chile, is one of the members of the Vatican’s Anti-Pedophile Commission that this afternoon, after ten years of work, presented its first global report on abuse in the Church. A report that does not provide figures of cases at a global level, but that makes demands on the institution itself to improve its actions with victims of abuse within the Catholic Church.
“The victims cry out for justice,” admitted Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who was archbishop of Boston and one of the most responsible for the fight against pedophilia in the Church during the presentation of the report, which includes a series of recommendations, including which highlight “streamlining and accelerating the resignation process” for abusers, as well as “rigorous reparation measures” for victims.
In fact, the study requires “studying compensation policies” at a global level to exercise “rigorous” reparation measures in the “healing” process of the victims, while admitting “a worrying lack” of reporting structures and support for survivors of sexual abuse. Furthermore: it is confirmed that the victims still suffer civil and canonical processes that are “difficult, slow and a source of continuous victimization”, which prevents them from developing a normal life.
To this day, and despite the reforms in Canon Law, there is still no statute for victims, who do not have full access to their judicial processes. Sometimes, even, the complainants only learn verbally of the results of the canonical trials, something that must radically change, in the opinion of the Commission, which has been received in recent days by Pope Francis.
To achieve this, the report states, the Catholic Church must promote victims’ access to information to confront the “problem” of opacity in canonical processes. “Measures should be studied that guarantee the right of every individual to access any information that affects them, especially in cases and responsibility for abuses,” the report reads.
“There are people without the means to hire a lawyer, who fear the cover-up of some bishops, who do not believe them, insult them or destroy their careers,” laments Juan Carlos Cruz, who proposes that the Church give a voice “to the good, to that we can silence the bad guys,” and asks the institution “not to put a blindfold on our eyes.” “The Church has to make a firm commitment to conversion, to ensure that this does not happen again,” he concludes in his double role as survivor and member of the Commission.
The report published this Tuesday calls for “ensuring effective, rapid and rigorous management” of each case of abuse, and “streamlining and accelerating the resignation process” of church leaders accused of abuse, “whenever justified.”
Something that, although it is already possible with the Code of Canon Law in hand, has barely been carried out.
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