BabaRa
15th January 2014, 23:08
The Vatican is gearing up for a showdown over the global priest sex abuse scandal, forced for the first time to defend itself at length and in public against allegations that it enabled the rape of thousands of children by protecting pedophile priests and its own reputation at the expense of victims.
A United Nations committee on Thursday will grill the Holy See in Geneva on its implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among other things, the treaty calls for signatories to take all appropriate measures to protect children from harm and to put children's interests above all else.
The Vatican will be represented by its most authoritative official on the issue, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, for a decade the Holy See's chief sex crimes prosecutor. He is credited with having overhauled the Vatican's procedures to better prosecute pedophiles in-house. But the Vatican to date has refused to instruct its bishops to report suspected cases of abuse to police, saying they need do so only when required by local laws.
Complete story: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/15/vatican-facing-unshowdownonsexabuserecord.html
A United Nations committee on Thursday will grill the Holy See in Geneva on its implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among other things, the treaty calls for signatories to take all appropriate measures to protect children from harm and to put children's interests above all else.
The Vatican will be represented by its most authoritative official on the issue, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, for a decade the Holy See's chief sex crimes prosecutor. He is credited with having overhauled the Vatican's procedures to better prosecute pedophiles in-house. But the Vatican to date has refused to instruct its bishops to report suspected cases of abuse to police, saying they need do so only when required by local laws.
Complete story: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/15/vatican-facing-unshowdownonsexabuserecord.html