ECA, SNAP, Bishop Accountability and others were present at the 2019 Summit in the streets and in one meeting with the Pope’s Summit leaders where we advocated for zero-tolerance as a universal law of the Church and mandatory reporting of abuse to local civil authorities. Anything else we believed would be ineffective and only half measures. Prior to the Summit Pope Francis often spoke of zero-tolerance as a goal of the Church. But surprisingly the words zero-tolerance were never spoken during the Summit and never made a universal law.

The Pope’s major initiatives were indeed half measures and ineffective as 3 years of history show.

Vos Estis is mostly a failure. Among many flaws it relied on bishops to police bishops. It did not provide for independent scrutiny; it did not require bishops to report crimes of abuse to local authorities, and the promise of protecting whistle blowers and providing comfort to victims were not kept. I speak in the past tense because by its own terms Vos Estis expired on June 1, 2022. 

See an analysis of Vos Estis by Bishop Accountabilty. 

Likewise, the abolishment of papal secrecy which signaled the promise for access to the abuse files has proved false. The files remain as inaccessible now as before the declaration.

The difficulty of this post-2019 phase is that apparently the Pope and the Vatican have done all they intend to do on this issue giving the world the impression it is on the road to eliminating clergy abuse. 

This is a dangerous place to be.

The truth is children are not safer and justice for survivors is further denied by the failures of these two initiatives.  
So more than ever we must continue to hold the Vatican to account.

In February 2023, ECA’s international members will go to Geneva to renew our call for the Vatican to implement the key 2014 recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and for the Vatican to file their long-overdue report to the United Nations. We will then go to Rome to call on the Pope to act on these UN recommendations and be present and hold vigil on the 4^th anniversary of the Pope’s Summit.

The key UN recommendations include making zero-tolerance a universal law of the Church, allowing access to the abuse files, and make mandatory the reporting of child abuse to local authorities by the bishops. https://ccrjustice.org/unitednationsrecommendsvaticanaccountability.

Zero-Tolerance

Zero-tolerance means the dismissal from ministry of any clergy person who is credibly accused of sexually abusing a child. How simple. It has worked as a law of the US Catholic Church since 2002.  Pope Francis, after a 4 year failure to even utter the words, recently in a widely reported interview ‘declares zero tolerance for the Church and that he takes personal responsibility for ending it (clergy abuse.)’

But survivors and advocates know the Pope’s declaration of zero tolerance is misleading. The truth is zero-tolerance is not a universal law of the Church and the 2019 Summit refused to make it one. The Pope’s aspiration for zero-tolerance means little and his declaration has no legal substance. It is a masterful use of words to make the public believe one thing when the reality is the opposite. A law would be transformative and would shift power from the bishops empowering victims to seek justice. The Pope could make it law by the stroke of the pen but refuses. Without zero-tolerance a priest can rape a child and still retain his job.

Survivors and advocates will not rest until zero-tolerance is a universal law of the Church.

Access to Abuse Files

In December 2019, following the Clergy Abuse Summit, the Pope declared with great fanfare the abolishment of papal secrecy regarding the sexual abuse files. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/world/europe/pope-francis-secrecy-sexual-abuse.html.

The clear impression and expectation were that survivors would now have access to their files. This was hailed around the world as very significant and the pope’s experts agreed calling it an ‘epochal decision’ (Scicluna), ‘revolutionary’ (Zollner) and ‘the carnival of obscurity is over’ (Cruz).

The truth is not a single file has been made available to anyone, if at all, without much resistance from the Church. The great promise was a great public relations coup for the Church, but the files remain as secure as ever in the vaults of the Vatican and in the bishop’s chanceries around the world.

These files document the abuse, the cover up, the systematic failures that pervades the Church on this issue that until the files and stories are fully known there can be no justice. 

Survivors and their advocates will not rest until the promise of the Church becomes a reality and the Church takes note of the words of its founder, “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” Luke 8:17.

Mandatory Reporting of Abuse

A major flaw of Vos Estis is the failure to require bishops to report sexual abuse of their clergy to local civil authorities. This failure means a priest or bishop can rape a child and avoid prosecution. Vos Estis calls for abuse to be reported to the bishop who may or may not take action, who may or may not remove the accused cleric from ministry and who may or may not punish the whistle blower or protect the victim. 

A dramatic failure on all counts occurred recently in the Congo as widely reported by the Washington Post in July 2022 of the rape of a 14-year-old girl. This case came to the attention of the world and the Pope, assisted by ECA, and highlights the failure of Vos Estis especially in the most vulnerable places of the world. To this day the girl is in hiding fearing for her life.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/clergy-sex-abuse-scandal-congo/.

ECA’s strategy, as humble as it is, is to appeal to the court of public opinion and to advocate with patience, persistence and presence. We don’t have the money or the Pope’s public relations apparatus, but we have something more valuable...

We have brave survivors from all parts of the world willing to come to the United Nations in Geneva and Rome to speak truth to power.

They will include:

A Canadian Innuit survivor of schools run by the Church resulting in many atrocities including sexual abuse and the destruction of a culture. The Innuits continue to be denied records under Church control that document their abuse and could provide information on the identity of children buried in unmarked graves; 

Argentine deaf/mute survivors of sexual abuse in Catholic run schools who today with the knowledge of Pope Francis, are unable to discover documents necessary for their trials as promised by the abolishment of Papal secrecy;

Representatives of a Congolese 17-year-old girl raped at the age of 14 by a priest who continues to be in ministry and protected by his bishop all with the knowledge of the Vatican.

They and others will come to draw public attention on the Church’s continued failures redress wrongs. 

As stated in the summary above, our plan is to bring representatives from all 6 continents to the United Nations in Geneva and Rome in February 2023, on the 4^th Anniversary of the Pope’s Summit. 

Funding is needed for travel and lodging expenses. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you would like to help financially you can do so by check or by PayPal donation on our website below.

Checks can be made payable to Ending Clergy Abuse and mailed to:

5017 37^th Ave SW, Seattle Washington 98126.

SOME OF THE PRESS HIGHLIGHTS OF ECA MEMBERS WORKING GLOBALLY

FRANCE- February, 2022- Nadia Debbache- Catholic Church raises $22 million so far for abuse victims following 2021 report finding clergy sexually abused over 200,000 children since 1950.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250265/catholic-church-in-france-raises-22-dollars-million-for-abuse-victims.

COLUMBIA- August,2022- Juan Pablo Barrientos- Catholic Church Releases List Of Priests Accused Of Sexually Abusing Minors

https://www.wionews.com/world/colombia-catholic-church-releases-list-of-26-alleged-pedophile-priests-510888.

NEW ZEALAND- February 2022- Murray Heasely- Catholic Church admits 14% of clergy have been accused of abuse since 1950. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/01/new-zealands-catholic-church-admits-14-of-clergy-have-been-accused-of-abuse-since-1950.

GERMANY- June, 2022- Matthias Katsch- Report Finds 196 Clerics Abused Minors in German Diocese of Muenster between 1945 and 2020, adding to findings from other dioceses that have shaken the church in the country.

https://apnews.com/article/religion-germany-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-2f725c6176ffaae3e3456fcca8511dad.

MEXICO-March, 2022- Adalberto Mendez

The time is ripe for a clergy abuse inquiry in Latin America

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/29/the-time-is-ripe-for-a-clergy-abuse-inquiry-in-latin-america.

PERU- January,2022- Pedro Salinas and Paolo Ugaz- Church authorities order second inquiry into troubled Peruvian order.

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-americas/2022/01/church-authorities-order-second-inquiry-into-troubled-peruvian-order.

ITALY- May, 2022-Francesco Zanardi- Italy’s Catholic Church is at a crossroads over sexual abuse investigation.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italys-catholic-church-crossroads-over-sexual-abuse-investigation-2022-05-19/.

INDIA- July, 2022- Joseph Kennedy- Unmasking Cardinal’s phone call dublicity https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/laity-unmask-cardinals-phone-call-duplicity.

UNITED STATES-August,2022-Peter Isely- Archbishop’s passing highlights complicated legacy.

https://www.fox6now.com/news/rembert-weaklands-passing-highlights-complicated-legacy.