Whatever Pope Francis does now, the church's record on child abuse faces tough international scrutiny
By B.C.
FROM the Vatican's point of view, being a sovereign power, albeit a very unusual one, is a quirk of history with many pros and cons. Under the terms of the Lateran Pacts between the Catholic church and the Italian state, signed in 1929, the papacy was left with a tiny patch of territory in the middle of Rome which can issue stamps but (as Stalin famously pointed out) has no armed forces expect a small corps of Swiss Guards. The holy see, the central leadership of the worldwide Catholic church, has permanent observer status in the the UN General Assembly; it can do almost everything that other members can, except vote.
As a signed-up party to many treaties and bodies, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Vatican takes an active part in world affairs. Sometimes it wins admiration for its quiet role as a peace-maker; sometimes it incurs controversy by opposing population policies that involve contraception. Most significantly, the Vatican's leadership including the pope can in some circumstances claim sovereign immunity from criminal or civil action arising out of the behaviour of people under its control. While particular Catholic dioceses have had to pay enormous sums in compensation to the victims of pedophile clerics, there has been no successful challenge of that kind to the Vatican itself.
But in recent days, there has been an abrupt reminder of the downside in being a player in inter-state diplomacy. A UN panel, the Committee on the Rights of the Child (which acts as a watchdog for the Convention), has sent the holy see a long and searching list of questions about the church's record and current stance on child abuse. The Committee is demanding answers with respect to every case of abuse perpetrated by clerics or members of religious orders in recent years; it wants to know whether the accused were taken away from any further contact with children, and whether the case was reported to secular authority or merely dealt with under canon law.
As it happens, the Vatican has already taken at least a small step towards addressing the UN's concerns, only a couple of days after the list of questions was published. Pope Francis announced a change to Vatican law under which child prostitution, sexual violence and sexual acts involving children will be specifically named as crimes, as opposed to falling under the broader heading of crimes against minors. In another change in a sensitive area, the criminal liability of the Vatican's administration will be extended to make it possible to indict its officials for crimes outside the Vatican city state. As The Economist has reported, this follows the resignation of the director of the Vatican bank and the imprisonment of a senior cleric for corruption.
But whatever Pope Francis does now, the Vatican will still face hard questions about the past, as the UN document makes clear. For example, the Vatican is called on to say how thoroughly it has probed the forced labour of Irish girls in laundries run by Catholic sisters. It is also asked about the level of support and protection given to victims of child abuse, especially when they wish to testify about their sufferings.
The UN panel is seeking written answers to its list of questions by November, prior to a public hearing early next year. Some of the questions were submitted after representations from the National Secular Society, a British NGO whose stated aim is to "challenge religious privilege". The organisation's director Keith Porteous Wood said Pope Francis had still to prove himself as a "new broom"—and his hopes of being one could be "wiped out unless, unlike his predecessors, he complies wholeheartedly with the Vatican's obligations" under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
