‘Child abuse cover-up has shamed entire Catholic Church’
THE Catholic Church is now a permanently disgraced institution after yet again, it has failed the very people it is supposed to protect.
The publication of an exhaustive grand jury report in America last week laid bare abuse stretching back decades in Pennsylvania.
Contained within it was the disturbing detail of at least 1,000 children allegedly raped or abused by more than 300 priests in the US state.
It reveals how hundreds of priests committed countless sexual assaults on helpless children.
The same priests who were supposed to be as protective of children as Jesus was, but in reality were rapists who preyed on children instead of praying for them.
Their actions were all covered up by a blanket of secrecy, denial and secret payoffs.
Repeated attempts to stop the abuse were answered by church leaders simply shifting the beasts from parish to parish instead of sending them from police to prison.
The UK is no better.
Only weeks ago, the Church of England was found to have disregarded dozens of allegations in its inquiry into child sexual abuse and then “downplayed” the issue to protect its reputation, according to a report by former Barnardo’s chief executive Sir Roger Singleton who found that close to 100 cases were whittled down to just a handful for a review released in 2010.
Earlier this month, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse reported how children at leading Catholic schools Ampleforth in North Yorkshire and Downside in Somerset, suffered “appalling” treatment by monks stretching over decades.
The panel found children as young as seven were sexually abused amid a “culture of acceptance of abusive behaviour”, but the report said both institutions attempted to cover up the allegations.
As in Pennsylvania, the church authorities tried to hide it, committing more crimes in doing so.
First, they abused the most vulnerable young people in their care and then other ordained men, usually of a higher cloth, allowed the abuse to continue by seeking to protect, not the children they were responsible for, but themselves and their reputations.
The scandal this week led Pope Francis to speak out.
In, what we are told, was an “unprecedented letter” he acknowledged the church’s “atrocities,” invited “the entire holy faithful people of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command” and promised such crimes would no longer be tolerated.
In his communique to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, he also admitted the victims’ “wounds never go away”.
In so doing, the pontiff provided a rationale for abandoning the church’s long-standing resistance to allowing decades-old cases of rape and molestation by priests to be subject to prosecution and lawsuits.
At last, after years of false promises and tone-deaf words, a Pope seemed to have woken up to the scale of abuse and corruption within the church.
The question now is whether he is willing, or able, to turn the tide of institutional resistance in the Vatican and dioceses worldwide, that previously prevented victims from seeking justice and recompense.
The truth is that, for far too long ,the church has been run by a self-serving group of misogynistic men. Now the world knows the depth of depravity in their ranks.
Radical changes are called for. Priests around the world need to look up to the heavens not down to hell from where they have been following the Devil not God.
It’s terrifying to imagine how many abuse cases are still unknown throughout America and the UK, but it is the church’s duty to find out.
Shame on them and those criminally complicit cardinals, bishops, and clergy. We can only pray the men guilty of such crimes are now brought to justice and let a judge, not God decide their punishment.
These men belong in prison, not the pulpit.