Vatican panel: Church must do better compensating sexual abuse victims

Vatican City — The Catholic Church must do a better job of handling compensation for the victims of clergy sexual abuse, the Vatican’s child protection commission said in its first annual report on Tuesday.

For decades, the Church has been shaken by scandals across the world involving pedophile priests and the cover-up of their crimes, damaging its credibility and costing it hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

The commission said compensation went beyond money, including “a much broader spectrum of actions … such as acknowledging mistakes, public apologies, and other forms of true fraternal closeness to victims/survivors.”

Pledging to work for the introduction of “standardized and known procedures … in a more comprehensive way,” it said it would delve deeper into the issue of reparations in its report next year.

Pope Francis, who set up the anti-abuse commission in 2013, faced some of the strongest criticism over clergy abuse during a September visit to Belgium, where the king and prime minister called for more help for victims.

This month, a Vatican summit of world bishops ended with a final text apologizing several times for the “untold and ongoing” pain suffered by Catholics abused by clergy.

Tuesday’s report called for greater transparency, with victims given more access to documents relating to them, and said investigations and trials by the Vatican’s doctrine office (DDF) were too slow and secretive.

During meetings with victims, “the lack of communication was a permanent, constant complaint,” Colombian Bishop and commission secretary Luis Manuel Ali Herrera told a press conference.

Chilean abuse survivor and commission member Juan Carlos Cruz said the lack of information was “a form of re-trauma for many survivors, who have no idea where their case of abuse is.”

Other recommendations included creating a Vatican Ombudsman for victims, ensuring more effective punishment of offending clergy, and an invitation for Francis to write an encyclical – the highest form of papal teaching – on child protection.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the Bishop Accountability abuse tracking group, said Tuesday’s report amounted to window dressing.

“It doesn’t focus on the central and devastating realities: that children in the Catholic Church are still being sexually assaulted by clergy, and that universal church law still allows these priests to be reinstated if certain conditions are met,” she told Reuters.  

The anti-abuse commission is the first of its kind in the Catholic Church, but abuse survivors have accused it of being toothless and several of its past members have left acrimoniously.

The commission, which includes priests, nuns but also lay people and non-Catholics, was incorporated into the DDF in 2022 in an effort to increase its clout, but the report highlighted how it still struggles to make itself heard.

As part of its dealings with national churches, it said it had sent a list of 10 detailed questions on child protection issues to all Mexican bishops, but only about 20% of them had replied.

U.S. Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who leads the commission but is due to retire soon, acknowledged past “frustration at the slowness of change,” but said things were getting better.
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