Report on abuse expected to trigger resignations

REPRESENTATIVES of a Polish NGO helping victims of child abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests left Warsaw early yesterday hoping to deliver a report to Pope Francis in the Vatican about Polish bishops neglecting paedophilia cases.

Their trip comes just days before an unprecedented Vatican conference on sex abuse, gathering senior bishops from around the world to discuss how best the 1.3-billion-member church can tackle a problem that has decimated its credibility.

The four-day meeting, starting on Thursday with the theme of “prevention of abuse of minors and vulnerable adults”, is intended to help faltering attempts to co-ordinate a global response to a crisis that is now more than two decades old.

The “Have No Fear” organisation, led by a former victim Marek Lisinski, hopes that the report, which accuses some bishops in devoutly Catholic Poland of failing to report crimes, will trigger resignations from top positions in the church.

Such a development happened in Chile last year, where the pope accepted resignations of several bishops after abuse scandals.

“Our report contains the neglect of bishops over the past years. We hope that the pope, after reading this report, will react in the same way as in Chile,” Lisinski said..

Mariusz Milewski, 28, was a victim of sexual abuse by a priest in a tiny town 163km north-west of Warsaw, with the first incident taking place when he was 9. He went on to be abused regularly by a priest for nine years. “Every time I went to the church I was afraid that the priest would invite me to the presbytery, where he did these things to me,” he said.

“I was from a poor family, my father overused alcohol. I was alone with this, and I had no one I could ask for help. I was blaming myself and asking myself if he did it to me because of my sins,” Mariusz said.

The perpetrator was jailed in 2014 for three years by a criminal court, after a canonical court declared him not guilty, according to documents. Critics say this shows the church often defends the perpetrators of abuse.

In Poland, victims of abuse by priests are often accused by society of making false accusations, since priests have high social prestige.

Thursday’s meeting will bring together presidents of national Roman Catholic bishops conferences, Vatican officials, experts and heads of male and female religious orders.

“I am absolutely convinced that our credibility in this area is at stake,” said Father Federico Lombardi, whom Pope Francis has chosen to moderate the gathering. “We have to get to the root of this problem and show our ability to undergo a cure as a church … or it would be better for us to get into another line of work.”

Some experts have questioned why it has taken so long to get to this point.

“The fact that this still exists in 2019… is a measure of what a low priority this has truly been for the Vatican,” said Anne Barrett-Doyle of the US-based abuse tracking group bishopaccountability.org

“I hope (the pope) has the candour to admit that it’s absolutely disgraceful,” she said.