UN report puts Pope in hot seat

ACCUSATIONS do not come much more damning than the United Nations’ new report into the Vatican’s handling of the Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandals.

According to a UN human rights committee, senior Vatican officials “systematically” created a climate within the church that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children with impunity.

The report challenges the Vatican to undertake a radical culture change to ensure any clergy suspected of abuse do not escape justice, and to act to prevent further cover-ups. And it demands changes to canon law to allow abortion in specific circumstances; and to allow Catholic schools to teach about contraception, to help the fight against HIV and Aids.

The Vatican is used to criticism, but not on this scale and from such an authoritative quarter. As such, the UN report represents perhaps the greatest challenge to the still-nascent papacy of Pope Francis.

This pope has been a revelation. His liberal attitude has shocked conservative clergy and laity who had become used to the Vatican taking a firmly orthodox view on doctrinal matters. Francis’s insistence on a “church for the poor” and his declaration that the Vatican needed to put less emphasis on a proscriptive view of sex and sexuality have shocked – or delighted – those on differing wings of the church.

But Francis has so far not been called upon to wrestle with the legal and institutional vested interests of the Vatican establishment, at whom this report is primarily aimed.

This challenge – and not his warm words, big smiles and humility – may be how Francis is ultimately judged.