The
“Protection of Minors in the Church” Meeting concludes with a Press Briefing in
the Vatican and the announcement of concrete commitments and initiatives to
protect children, and to combat abuse.
There
have been four Press Conferences, coinciding with the four days of the Meeting.
Each one has provided a synthesis of the day’s discussions and reflections, and
allowed journalists an opportunity to engage with participants and speakers in
what was often a lively Q&A session.
One
implicit (and explicit) question underscored the concluding press briefing on
Sunday: “What now”? Expectations were high, especially given Pope Francis’
mandate to participants, at the start of the Meeting, to come up with
“concrete” initiatives to help the Church in protecting minors.
Concrete initiatives
It
fell to Fr. Federico Lombardi SJ, as Moderator of the Meeting on the
“Protection of Minors in the Church”, to announce three such initiatives:
1. The
imminent publication of a Motu proprio by the Pope, providing rules and
regulations to safeguard minors and vulnerable adults within Vatican City
State.
2. The
distribution of a “vademecum” (or rulebook) to Bishops around the world,
explaining their juridical and pastoral duties and responsibilities with regard
to protecting children.
3. The
creation of an operative “task force”, comprising competent experts, to assist
those Bishops’ Conferences that may lack the necessary resources or expertise
to confront the issue of safeguarding minors, and deal with abuse.
There
was a fourth response to the “what now” question: the fact that the Organizing
Committee will be meeting with heads of Vatican Curia departments to discuss
follow-up and reflect on a related question: “What next?”
Media
relationships
The
“Protection of Minors” Meeting in the Vatican has received extensive coverage
throughout the media over the last few days. The Prefect of the Vatican
Dicastery for Communication, Paolo Ruffini, acknowledged as much when he
thanked journalists for their work. He stressed the role of journalists as that
of “searching for and reporting the truth”. He spoke of the importance of
“listening without prejudice”, and confirmed how “there can be no communication if everyone
is talking and no one is listening”. Ruffini, and others on the panel at the
Press Conference, praised Mexican journalist, Valentina Alazraki, for her
“courageous” contribution to the Meeting on Saturday, when she addressed the
Bishops on the theme of transparency: “Communication to all people”.
Addressing
the Press Conference, Valentina Alazraki encouraged “working together with the
Church” on this issue, but reminded the Bishops never to say “no comment”, and
to be sure to provide media with “timely and fair information”.
Last
impressions
Asked
for his take-away on the “Protection of Minors” Meeting, Cardinal Oswald
Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay, called it “timely, useful, and necessary”. He
and his brother Bishops, he said, came away with a universal understanding and
consciousness that confronting the problem of abuse is “a priority for the
Church”. He also praised the contribution of women at the encounter,
highlighting the value of their “feminine insights and perspectives”.
Archbishop
Charles Scicluna of Malta provided his own “flashbacks of these four days”. He
said he was struck by the Holy Father’s concluding speech and his clarity,
defining both abuse and cover-ups as “egregious crimes”. “There is no going
back”, said the Archbishop. He also said that the presence of victims-survivors
was a vital part of the experience. “We cannot not listen to victim-survivors”,
he added. Archbishop Scicluna stressed how “at the end of the day, it is a
change of heart that is important”. We need the right motivation and, for that,
we need to listen to different voices – including those of women, who (in the
case of this Meeting) provided a “breath of fresh air”.
Jesuit
Father Hans Zollner, is a member of the Organizing Committee and Head of the
Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He spoke of
a “qualitative and quantitative leap along a decade-long journey that will
continue”. Attitudes have changed, he said, and people have been transformed:
they are determined to “go back home and do something about it”.
Right
now, concluded Fr. Zollner, “we need to focus on what we have done here” at
this Meeting in the Vatican, and to tackle “the systemic roots of the problem”.
These, the themes of the three days of the Meeting, reflect both the problem
and the solution: Responsibility, Accountability, and Transparency.
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