A Vatican commission set up to address the clerical sexual abuse crisis said on Thursday that the Roman Catholic Church was still too slow in addressing a problem that has plagued it for decades.
The commission called on church leaders to act more quickly and more transparently, and recommended that the church listen to, and involve, survivors as it works to build trust after decades of scandal.
“Many times I have also asked myself that same question: Why so slow?” Msgr. Luis Manuel Alí Herrera, the commission’s secretary, said at a news conference to present its latest report. “Sometimes I admit that I have been discouraged because I wanted the change to be more obvious, more radical.”
But, he added, many bishops around the world were now actively working with the commission, a marked change from the pattern when it was established 11 years ago.
The focus of this year’s report, the commission’s second, was to push for more reparations beyond the financial payments now being given to some victims.
The report said that “the primary need” from survivors was not “financial compensation but rather recognition of harm, genuine apologies, and meaningful action to prevent future abuses.” Many survivors complained to the commission that the church had often responded with “empty settlements, performative gestures, and a persistent refusal to engage” with them “in good faith.”
It said bishops should take public responsibility for the abuse that victims had endured.
The commission, the full name of which in English is the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, was formed in 2014 to advise Pope Francis on how best to protect minors and vulnerable adults from sexual predators among the clergy. Its members include clergy, survivors and independent outsiders, including some with law-enforcement expertise.
From the beginning, critics have complained that the commission has no enforcement powers. Reports to it from individual countries — some two dozen were examined this year — are still based mainly on self-reporting by bishops’ groups. And compliance with questionnaires meant to explore how cases were handled was not universal, the commission said.
This report comes just months into the papacy of Leo XIV and underlines the challenges he will face. It covers 2024, before Leo was pope. Leo has met with commission members four times.
The findings suggest that more than two decades after the clerical abuse crisis exploded into the public sphere, the church’s response remains mixed, despite efforts by Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis to try to codify a response through new church laws. Victims’ groups have said that even Francis did too little to ensure that allegations were properly investigated, that predators were removed from their posts, and that those who covered up abuse were held accountable.
The latest report includes a section with survivors’ concerns, based on the input of 40 people from around the world. Many reported that their complaints of abuse had been ignored and that often the church did not provide access to information about their cases.
The report cited one frustrated person, who was unnamed, as saying, “You want to know and they don’t tell you anything. It’s like being sent to purgatory.”
After the first report was issued last year, critics dismissed the findings given by individual countries, noting that they had not been verified by independent observers. The second report sought to rectify those criticisms by presenting observations about each country from the reporting mechanism of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, as well as the observations of the Vatican’s ambassadors in each country and personnel working on the ground.
The commission also said it spoke to victims to allow them to offer their “reactions and perspectives on the accuracy and relevance of the commission’s findings.”
But at least in the case of Italy, the commission did not reach out to Rete l’Abuso, the country’s leading advocate for sexual abuse survivors, Francesco Zanardi, that group’s founder and president, said.
The Rev. Hans Zollner, one of the church’s leading experts in clerical sex abuse, said, “The church has made major steps forward, in terms of promulgating guidelines, introducing safety concepts, and education and safeguarding.”
But he added that the “picture remains mixed because there is a lack of consistency across countries.”
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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