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Catholic bishops not obliged to report clerical child abuse, Vatican says
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: February 14th, 2016
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/catholic-bishop...
The Catholic church is telling newly appointed bishops that it is not necessarily their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse and that only victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police. A document that spells out how senior clergy members ought to deal with allegations of abuse, which was recently released by the Vatican, emphasised that, though they must be aware of local laws, bishops only duty was to address such allegations internally. According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds, the training document states. Details of the Catholic churchs policy were first reported in a column by a veteran Vatican journalist, John Allen. Allen noted that a special commission created by Pope Francis, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, had appeared to play no role in the training programme, even though it is supposed to be developing best practices to prevent and deal with clerical abuse. The news comes just days after the abuse commission forced one of two abuse survivors who had personally been appointed by Pope Francis to leave the committee following a vote of no confidence. Peter Saunders, a British abuse survivor and vocal critic of the churchs alleged lack of action on abuse, said he was blind-sided by the vote.
Note: Watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team titled "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which leads directly to the highest levels of government. A second suppressed documentary, "Conspiracy of Silence," goes even deeper into this sad subject. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing sexual abuse scandal news articles from reliable major media sources.
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