Insta
Sham At Rome? Holy Fathers Congregate For Vatican Summit To Discuss Ways To Prevent Predatory Priests From Sexually Abusing Children
Swarajya Staff
Feb 21, 2019, 05:11 PM | Updated 05:11 PM IST
Save & read from anywhere!
Bookmark stories for easy access on any device or the Swarajya app.
Pope Francis has opened a four-day Vatican conference that will discuss ways to fight the sexual abuse of children by predatory Christian priests, The Guardian reported.
The unprecedented meeting of bishops is being perceived as an acknowledgement by the Vatican of the scale of the sexual abuse problem.
Francis has come under fire for his apathetic response to gruesome revelations over the past year that thousands of Catholic priests sexually preyed on minors and adult seminarians. Francis has himself faced allegations of covering up their sexual crimes.
In his opening remark, Francis called on the church "to heal grave wounds the paedophilia scandal has caused to both the young and the believers".
"The holy people of God are watching and waiting not for simple and obvious condemnations but concrete and efficient measures," Pope added.
The conference is being attended by the heads of some 110 national Catholic bishops’ conferences and dozens of experts and leaders of religious orders in the Vatican. The meeting is expected discussing steps to prevent clerical sex abuse.
As Pope Francis Orders Predatory Priests Who Sexually Abused Minors to Turn Themselves In, A Thread On Investigations Across The World That Unravelled The âIndustrial Scaleâ Sexual Abuse Of Children By Thousands Of Catholic Priests. https://t.co/Lxb1xO7Bg6
— Prasanna Viswanathan (@prasannavishy) December 23, 2018
Many critics have dismissed the event as nothing but a publicity stunt aimed at salvaging some credibility by an institutions which has been hit by hundreds of sex abuse scandals for more than three decades now.
This meeting will take place amid the global release of a new book titled “In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy” by a gay French journalist Frédéric Martel who claims that 80 per cent of the Vatican clergy are gay.
The book also claims that in vast majority of sexual abuse cases, the priests and bishops protect the aggressors because they fear their own homosexuality might be revealed in the event of a scandal.
Save & read from anywhere!
Bookmark stories for easy access on any device or the Swarajya app.
Support Swarajya's 50 Ground Reports Project & Sponsor A Story
Every general election Swarajya does a 50 ground reports project.
Aimed only at serious readers and those who appreciate the nuances of political undercurrents, the project provides a sense of India's electoral landscape. As you know, these reports are produced after considerable investment of travel, time and effort on the ground.
This time too we've kicked off the project in style and have covered over 30 constituencies already. If you're someone who appreciates such work and have enjoyed our coverage please consider sponsoring a ground report for just Rs 2999 to Rs 19,999 - it goes a long way in helping us produce more quality reportage.
You can also back this project by becoming a subscriber for as little as Rs 999 - so do click on this links and choose a plan that suits you and back us.
Click below to contribute.