Vatican City, Mar 24, 2017 / 03:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a significant show of unity, officials from every Vatican department – including at least half a dozen cardinals who head various dicasteries – attended a recent Rome seminar on safeguarding minors.
“I actually come from a dicastery that takes up the issue of human rights and justice,” said Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
As head of an office that deals with human rights, awareness of what’s going on in the realm of abuse prevention is “very crucial,” he told CNA, stressing that “it’s so very important that we try to be on the same page with this commission and what they do.”
Every department of the Roman Curia was represented in some way at the March 23 seminar, an indication of its importance in the eyes of Vatican officials.
It is rare for the cardinals who head dicasteries to attend events outside of those hosted by their own department – more often, they send representatives to attend. The presence of several cardinals at Thursday’s event further indicated that the Vatican is seeking to place an emphasis on this issue, especially given that the one-day event was not specifically aimed at members of the Curia, but at a wider audience.
Joining Cardinal Turkson at the gathering was Cardinal Kevin Farrell, president of the Vatican’s mega-department for Laity, Family and Life.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley hosted the event in his capacity as head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and the seminar was also attended by Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, head of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life; Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Congregation for Bishops and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America; and Cardinal Pell, prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.
Cardinal Turkson said that in the case of his own department, he sent the official charged with the topic of international law, human rights, family law and other related topics, but also decided to come himself because it is “essential to see the new things that are being said about this issue.”
“There’s no pastor who is not interested in this issue, especially if he’s a bishop, because there was a way that bishops used to deal with this issue,” he said, noting that often times, priests were simply sent to treatment centers and then put into another parish once they had completed the program.
“Now the understanding about this is deeper,” he said. “The impression in those days was that people could go to treatment centers and get help, but that was all false.”
“So it’s good to deepen our understanding about this, very, very, very deeply and very well,” he said, explaining that he came not only to support Cardinal O’Malley, a longtime friend, but also to learn and hear updates on the issue.
Cardinal Farrell agreed. “It’s important for the Church to be here because…if you look back on the history of probably the last 20 years, it’s the greatest obstacle to preaching the Word of God and the credibility of doing what we’re supposed to do,” he told CNA.
Sponsored jointly by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) and the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection, the day-long educational seminar focused on what the local church and institutions are doing to combat abuse of minors specifically in schools and the home.
It included presentations by several members and collaborators of the commission, including Kathleen McCormack, chair of the PCPM Working Group on Education of Families and Communities. It also featured presentations by representatives from Mexico, Colombia and Argentina, as well as Australia and Italy.
The event fell just weeks after clerical abuse survivor Marie Collins resigned from her position on the commission, citing pushback from certain Vatican dicasteries, specifically from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as one of the main reasons for stepping down.
According to Fr. Hans Zollner SJ, head of the Center for Child Protection and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, hearing and including the voice of survivors was a key point in the discussion during their plenary, which begins March 24.
In March 23 comments to CNA, Fr. Zollner said “we need to be informed by survivors and victims, we need to listen to them, and we need to take into account what has been and is their experience.”
Regarding the involvement of survivors in the process, he noted that Collins herself said in an interview that “a certain set of skills” is needed if a survivor wants to participate in any kind of panel or commission.
“So we will see, together with survivors, what this set of skills should look like,” he said, but cautioned that it isn’t as easy as it sounds. From his perspective as someone who travels around the world trying to raise awareness on the issue, in many countries “people are not so used to speaking out about this.”
“Even if they are a survivor and victim, in some parts of the world this is still taboo and we need to help people come out of that,” he said, explaining that when their mandate is up at the end of the year, the commission will re-visit their structure and development process “so that our journey continues.”
But in the meantime, he praised the seminar as a key step, saying it was a “very successful event,” particularly in “drawing many high-ranking members of the Curia, including a number of cardinals, and (with) all the dicasteries represented.”
Hannah Brockhaus contributed to this report.
Article Archive
Protection of minors event draws swath of top Vatican leaders
Related Articles • More Articles
A patient at the new Misky María Palliative Care Hospital located on the outskirts of Lima, Perú. / Credit: Asociación de las Bienaventuranzas (Association of the Beatitudes)ACI Prensa Staff, May 4, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).In the context of the recent news of the death of Ana Estrada, the first person to request and receive euthanasia in Peru, there is a contrasting story to tell on care for the dying in that country: that of a new Catholic hospital on the outskirts of Lima that provides palliative care, which extends the love of Christ to those in extreme poverty who are in the final stages of their lives.The beginning of the 'Misky María' HospitalIn 2021, Father Omar Sánchez Portillo, a priest known for his extensive charitable work in the district of Lurín (south of Lima) and founder of the Association of the Beatitudes, had the dream of building a center to serve, with the "sweetness of Mary," people in situations of abandonment and extreme poverty who have terminal illnesses...
President Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jesuit Father Greg Boyle on May 3, 2024. / Screenshot/public domainCNA Staff, May 3, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).The White House on Friday announced that Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, the founder of a prominent ministry dedicated to rehabilitating gang-affiliated youth, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom alongside 18 other recipients this afternoon. Boyle, ordained a priest in 1984, founded Homeboy Industries in 1992 while pastor of Dolores Mission, a Catholic church and school in an area that at one time had one of the highest concentrations of gang activity in Los Angeles. Today, Homeboy Industries claims to be the largest gang-intervention program in the United States.The successful ministry, which now operates nationwide, offers training and job skills to those formerly involved in gangs or in jail, as well as case management, tattoo removal, mental health and legal services, and GED completion.Wh...
Father Roger Landry, Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, discusses the protests at Columbia University in New York City on EWTN's "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo" on May 2, 2024. / Credit: EWTN News The World Over / ScreenshotWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 3, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).Father Roger Landry, a Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, said on Thursday that the protests making national headlines at the New York City school are being organized in part by "explicitly communist" outside forces. "There is an instrumentalization of what's going on in Gaza to advance an agenda," he said. "And that is to deconstruct our present world order at which the United States is considered the top of that order."Speaking on EWTN's "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo," Landry said that he had been walking through the encampment nearly daily, conversing with student protesters and other "outside agitators." While he said he believes that many of the protesters we...