Urging a sprawling religious institution to take immediate remedial action to redress a scourge of pervasive sexual abuse within its ranks is unlikely to generate global controversy. Unless that organization is the Catholic Church and the edict is issued by a secular watchdog and muddied by the Vatican’s unique status as a hybrid sovereign state ruled by its own religious laws and mores.

On Feb. 5, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a stern rebuke of the Holy See for its failure to comply with its international obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The panel’s observations in its second periodic report on the Vatican accused it of systematically protecting pedophile priests and showing greater concern for preserving its own reputation and protecting the perpetrators than for upholding the best interests of the children.(cleanhippie note: This IS what happened here. That is fact. Does anyone dare anyone to deny this?) It called on the church to remove abusive clergy from official duty, turn abusers and those who shielded them over to state authorities for prosecution and release its voluminous archives of sexual-abuse complaints.

The U.N. report has reignited a lingering debate between defenders of the church and critics who deplore its handling of the sex-abuse crisis. Survivor groups and their supporters hailed the report as a watershed development in their arduous and lengthy battle to seek redress for past and ongoing abuses as well as efforts to prevent future ones. They have long criticized the Vatican for hiding behind a stony and impenetrable wall of secrecy, obstructing justice, protecting abusers and punishing whistle-blowers.


http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-vatican-stillprotectspedophilepriests.html