Vatican 'must immediately remove' child abusers

The BBC has an article by David Willey about the United Nations, on its hobbyhorse at last:

The UN has said that the Vatican should "immediately remove" all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers. The UN watchdog for children's rights denounced the Holy See for adopting policies which allowed priests to sexually abuse thousands of children.
In a report, it also criticized Vatican attitudes towards homosexuality, contraception and abortion. The Vatican responded by saying it would examine the report, but also accused its authors of interference.
A group representing the victims of abuse by priests in the US welcomed the report.
In its findings, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said the Holy See should open its files on members of the clergy who had "concealed their crimes" so that they could be held accountable by the authorities.
The Vatican quickly moved into damage control mode after publication of the UN report.
While promising "thorough study" of the criticisms, the Holy See robustly rejects some of the points made by the UN.
The Vatican has always given precedence to church law, called Canon Law, over local criminal law in dealing with ecclesiastical crime. It does not easily tolerate interference by civil authorities in ecclesiastical matters.
The recent case of a senior Vatican diplomat, a Polish archbishop, who was suddenly recalled to Rome from his post in Santo Domingo after serious police accusations of sexual abuse of minors there is a case in point. The Vatican has refused an extradition request by justice authorities in Poland, and says an internal police investigation is under way inside Vatican City. The UN said it was gravely concerned that the Holy See had not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, and expressed its "deepest concern about child sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic churches who operate under the authority of the Holy See, with clerics having been involved in the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children worldwide". It also lambasted the "practice of offenders' mobility", referring to the transfer of child abusers from parish to parish within countries, and sometimes abroad.
The committee said this practice placed "children in many countries at high risk of sexual abuse, as dozens of child sexual offenders are reported to be still in contact with children".
The UN report called on a Vatican commission created by Pope Francis in December of 2013 to investigate all cases of child sexual abuse "as well as the conduct of the Catholic hierarchy in dealing with them".
Ireland's Magdalene laundries scandal was singled out by the report as an example of how the Vatican had failed to provide justice despite "slavery-like" conditions, including degrading treatment, violence and sexual abuse. The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses where some ten thousand women and girls were required to do unpaid manual labour between 1922 and 1996.
The report's findings come after Vatican officials were questioned in public last month in Geneva about why they would not release data and what they were doing to prevent future abuse. The Vatican has denied any official cover-up. However, in December of 2013, it refused a UN request for data on abuse on the grounds that it only released such information if requested to do so by another country as part of legal proceedings.
Many campaigners feel the Vatican should open its files on priests known to be child abusers In January of 2014, the Vatican confirmed that almost four hundred priests had been defrocked in a two-year period by the former Pope Benedict XVI over claims of child abuse. The UN committee's recommendations are non-binding and there is no enforcement mechanism.

Recent examples of priests abusing children: 

Germany: A priest, named only as Andreas L, admitted in 2012 to 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys over a decade.
United States: Revelations about abuses in the 1990s by two Boston priests, Paul Shanley and John Geoghan, caused public outrage.
Belgium: The bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned in April of 2010 after admitting that he had sexually abused a boy for years.
Italy: The Catholic Church in Italy admitted in 2010 that about a hundred cases of paedophile priests had been reported over ten years.
Ireland: A report in 2009 found that sexual and psychological abuse was "endemic" in Catholic-run industrial schools and orphanages for most of the twentieth century.

But bishops in many parts of the world have tended to concentrate on protecting and defending the reputation of priests, rather than listening to the complaints of victims of paedophile priests.
Meanwhile several Catholic dioceses in the US have been forced into bankruptcy after paying out huge sums in compensation to victims of abuse by clergy.
The Vatican said in a statement following the report's publication: "The Holy See takes note of the concluding observations... which will be submitted to a thorough study and examination... according to international law and practice."
But it added that it "regrets to see in some points of the concluding observations an attempt to interfere with Catholic Church teaching on the dignity of human person and in the exercise of religious freedom" and "reiterates its commitment to defending and protecting the rights of the child... according to the moral and religious values offered by Catholic doctrine".
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, head of the Holy See's delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, told Vatican Radio the report had failed to take into account the fact that the Vatican had made "a series of changes for the protection of children", and its efforts at reform were "fact, evidence, which cannot be distorted".
He added that the UN could not ask the Church to change its "non-negotiable" moral teachings.
Victims groups welcomed the report as a wake-up call to secular law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute Church officials who were still protecting "predator priests".
Barbara Blaine, president of a group representing US victims of abuse by priests, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told the BBC that the UN report "reaffirms everything we've been saying. It shows that the Vatican has put the reputation of Church officials above protection of children. Church officials knew about it and they refused to stop it. Nothing has changed. Despite all the rhetoric from Pope Francis and Vatican officials, they refuse to take action that will make this stop."

Nicole Winfield has a related article at The Associated Press:

Pope Francis came under new pressure to punish bishops who covered up for pedophile priests when a UN human rights panel accused the Vatican of systematically protecting its reputation instead of looking out for the safety of children.
In a scathing report that thrilled victims and stunned the Vatican, the United Nations committee said the Holy See maintained a "code of silence" that enabled priests to sexually abuse tens of thousands of children worldwide over decades with impunity.
Among other things, the panel called on the Vatican to immediately remove all priests known or suspected to be child molesters, open its archives on abusers and the bishops who covered up for them, and turn the abuse cases over to law enforcement authorities for investigation and prosecution.
The committee largely brushed aside the Vatican's claims that it has already instituted new safeguards, and it accused the Roman Catholic Church of still harboring criminals. "The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators," the panel said.
The stinging language surprised the Vatican and put it in damage-control mode, with officials strongly defending the church and accusing the committee of allowing itself to be swayed by pro-gay ideologues. The Vatican, which defended itself at a UN committee hearing last month, said the panel ignored the measures the Holy See has already taken to protect children.
"I'm tempted to say that the text was probably written ahead of time," said the Vatican's UN ambassador, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi.
Nevertheless, the report puts pressure on Francis to take decisive action after a year in which he has largely let the abuse portfolio fall by the wayside as he tackled other pressing issues, such as reforming the Vatican bureaucracy.
The Vatican announced in December of 2013 that the new pope would create a commission to study how to prevent abuse and help victims, but no firm details about its makeup or scope have been released since.
And critically, the Vatican has yet to sanction any bishop for having covered up for an abusive priest, even though more than a decade has passed since the scandal exploded in the US and countless law enforcement investigations around the world made it clear the role bishops played.
Vatican officials have suggested that, under Francis, this might soon change.
The report was issued by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, an eighteen-member panel that includes academics, sociologists and child development specialists from around the globe.
Its job is to monitor compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty the Vatican ratified in 1990. The treaty calls for signatories to protect children from harm. Only three countries have failed to ratify it: the US, Somalia, and South Sudan.
Last month, the Vatican was subjected to a blistering daylong grilling by the UN committee, which then produced its final observations.
"The committee expresses serious concern that in dealing with child victims of different forms of abuse, the Holy See has systematically placed preservation of the reputation of the church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims," the report concluded.
At a news conference in Geneva, committee chairwoman Kirsten Sandberg ticked off some of the core findings: that bishops moved pedophile priests from parish to parish rather than reporting them to police, that known abusers are still in contact with children, and that the Vatican has never required bishops to report abusers to police.
"This report gives hope to the hundreds of thousands of deeply wounded and still suffering clergy sex abuse victims across the world," said Barbara Blaine, president of the main US victims group, SNAP.
"Now it's up to secular officials to follow the UN's lead and step in to safeguard the vulnerable because Catholic officials are either incapable or unwilling to do so."
Critically, the committee rejected the Vatican's longstanding argument that it doesn't control bishops or their abusive priests. The panel essentially held the Vatican responsible for every priest, parish, and Catholic school in the world, calling on it to pay compensation to all victims of sexual abuse worldwide, and also to those who labored in Ireland's notorious Magdalene Laundries, the church-run workhouses where young women were subject to slave labor and often had their out-of-wedlock babies taken from them.
While the Vatican itself didn't raise an objection to that aspect of the report, other church advocates did. "I think that the UN report describes a monolithic church that does not exist in fact," said Nicholas Cafardi, a US canon lawyer and former chairman of the US bishops' lay review board that monitored clerical abuse. "The pope in Rome cannot control and is certainly not responsible for what happens throughout the Catholic world."
The committee disagreed. Benyam Mezmur, a committee member and Ethiopian academic on children's legal rights, cited, among other things, a letter from a Vatican cardinal advising Irish bishops to refrain from any policy requiring they report pedophiles to police.
"They keep saying they don't have the authority, but in the meantime we have had instances of the Holy See trying to influence bishops," he said in an interview. "You cannot have it both ways. Either you have influence or you don't."
The committee's recommendations are non-binding and there is no enforcement mechanism. But it asked the Vatican to comply and report back by 2017. The recommendations extended far beyond child sexual abuse in ways that conflict with church teachings. For example, the committee urged the Vatican to amend canon law to allow abortions on children in some circumstances, such as to protect the life of the young mother. It asked the Holy See to ensure that sex education, including access to information about contraception, is mandatory in Catholic schools. And it called on the Vatican to condemn discrimination against homosexual children or youngsters raised by gay couples.
Tomasi accused the committee of adopting a pro-gay "ideological line".

Rico says he is reminded of Churchill's line about the Vatican: "How many divisions does the Pope have, anyway?". But, even though the guy dresses like a New York mafioso, wears a Jewish yarmulke, and blows kisses to the crowd, Canon Law needs to be replaced by Cannon Law: