Vatican anti-abuse commission creates fund to help victims of clergy in poor countries

EL PAÍS launched in 2018 an investigation of pedophilia in the Spanish Church and has an updated database with all known cases. If you know of any case that has not seen the light, you can write to: abusos@elpais.es. If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: abusosamerica@elpais.es.

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The Vatican Commission for the Protection of Minors, created by Pope Francis in 2014 with the aim of protecting victims of abuse, bringing justice and preventing the recurrence of these crimes in the Church, has created a fund to help victims of clergy in poorer countries, where bishops' conferences do not have many resources.

The initiative has arisen at the suggestion of Pope Francis, who has denounced that in poor countries the victims "suffer in silence", because they lack the resources to denounce and obtain help. The idea is that the episcopal conferences with more means make economic contributions that will be invested in formation programs to guarantee better assistance to the victims and their environment. According to the Vatican commission in a statement, the project is already being tested with a pilot program signed with the Church of Rwanda.

The commission has also announced that other requests of Pope Francis will be fulfilled, such as the preparation of an annual report on protection policies and procedures in the Church. The plan is to "adopt a human-centered design methodology that focuses on how the needs of victims can be prioritized, which will be addressed in the Church's reporting mechanisms, with the aim of offering proposals to the Pope to fill existing gaps [in this matter]."

In addition, on May 31 will be published the update of the guidelines that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent in 2011 to episcopal conferences to address cases of sexual abuse of minors by clergy. This document contains indications for assisting victims and also for forming the ecclesial community in the protection of minors. Among other things, the commission has also announced that it is discussing how to address another of the pontiff's requests: combating sexual crimes against minors on the Internet.

Among the novelties adopted by the commission is also the use of "a verification tool that will serve to assess the adequacy of the guidelines for the protection of local churches." In addition, a five-year strategic plan has been approved that identifies objectives, targets and performance indicators that aim to measure progress and be accountable to stakeholders.

These decisions were taken during the plenary assembly of the Vatican anti-abuse commission, a meeting that has been shrouded in controversy after the German Jesuit Hans Zollner, one of the leading experts in the fight against the abuse of minors in the Church, announced last March that he was leaving this body, of which he had been part since its creation. Zollner also denounced a lack of transparency and disagreements with the functioning of the commission.

Francis received in audience the members of the anti-abuse commission last Friday and invited them to prepare a report "on what they think works well and what does not", to "be able to make the appropriate changes", and assured that "much has been done in these first six months", but "that more can be done". He also invited the members of this body to "not stagnate, to persevere and to continue moving forward."

"The Holy Father has asked us a lot and we are all committed to making it happen," the commission's chairman, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, said in the statement. And it adds that after the meeting "adjustments have been made according to our work methodology, in order to clarify our different roles and create a sense of common belonging to our mandate and our collective responsibility for its implementation."

The Vatican Commission for the Protection of Minors is made up of abuse prevention experts with a mandate to advise the Pope and implement best protection practices in local churches on every continent.

The abuse scandals have undermined the reputation of the Church and posed a major challenge to the pope, who over the past 10 years has approved a series of measures aimed at holding the church hierarchy more accountable, and eradicating both abuse and its cover-up, with mixed results in different parts of the world.