many. times. german. journalist peter berg was just. 13 years later looks back on the. stories december 19th. w. . featuring happen people just don't believe in the church the catholic church is not a monolithic block new rules this year on how to handle sexual abuse in the catholic church have failed to satisfy victims' groups which still insist to be in the so are at risk from predatory. my guest this week here in rome is the jesuit priest father on it's sold out there was a meeting an expert on such a abuse among the clergy is the vatican serious about real change or will continue to provide opportunity and. to priests who commit these terrible crimes.

probably hundreds sort of a welcome to convict i think you know years after thousands of sex abuse cases committed by catholic priests have come to light around the world the church is still failing to cooperate with successive inquiries failing to come clean about everything it knows still failing to change why is the. i think there are factors make it difficult to change but overall i see change happening over the last 2 years we have had a number of corporations with so civil authorities in the u.s. bishops have handed over on their own without any requests from state authorities documents only see has cooperated on diplomatic ways with governments well let me

give you an example of what i'm talking about last month an investigation by the associated press slammed the catholic review boards in america these mandatory bodies that were set up to probe evidence of abuse they found a whole catalogue of dishonesty and cover ups across the country they said bishops had masked these boards in secrecy often hiding who served on them in dozens of cases secular courts or government investigators later decided abuse was credible after the board said it wasn't you know these people have been chosen from among professionals they are lay people mostly on those boards the bishops are chosen yeah but they have wanted to go on the board so it is also their responsibility what they do we have had enormous and none of them are some cases the board members were lied to or weren't even told the truth this is up to the bishops responsibility and then they have to take whatever they need to do as responsibility they are responsible for that yeah but they're not i mean they're not taking responsibility a.p.

says that the review boards appointed by the bishops operating in secrecy have routinely undermined sex abuse claims from victims shielded abuse accused priests and help the church of void payments all this has to be uncovered and that's why we need those news and when he just goes on and on but you said things were positive this isn't positive until there's no absolutely and i said in my 1st response to you that there are things that are difficult to change but there are other elements that are changing this investigation that points to the fact that there are significant numbers of senior clergy in your church who basically rotten church despite everything still provides a home for deceivers. criminal priests or booze don't you ever ask why. they managed to find a home in the catholic church these people know i mean they have not found a home for the how they have chosen bad and they have behaved as they have so many have to be taken to accountability and uses for them appart unity and cover over

the years because because we have we have now instead established a system of accountability within the meeting of the presidents of the bishops conferences that we organized in february for the 1st time we have made a 1st step forward in something like a delegation of accountability from rome to the local level that was one of the problems because the catholic church is not a monolithic block it exists in 7000 diocese and the pope is the only one according to cannonball who can really sanction a priest and bishop so it is now now it is possible since 1st of june with a new law that has been established that the local metropolitan the archbishop can and needs to oversee what the bishops in his district do or don't and he has to report if there is a failure negligence or cover up ok well let's talk about accountability in more

detail the later but in january this year the pope criticized bishops in the u.s. for covering up sexual abuse and indulging in gossip and slander to avoid responsibility was painful he said to watch a piece kaputt lacking in unity and concentrate more on pointing fingers than on seeking part of reconciliation if it was so painful to him why not use the remedy that was staring him in the face and remains in his hands to set the bishops sack as many as you have to in order to restore some public trust in the church. but if he doesn't do that you say yes but he doesn't do that he did it yesterday with one yeah and over the last year he did a couple of more and and. a number of them i know a couple of more how many bishops if you've got in this church when you receive a report on that he has hacked them and he has taken the initiative to do that i mean this peter isley who heads the group ending clergy abuse says the only way to

solve this is at the top he the pope can do it with the stroke of a pen and he does every now and then when when there is a report when there is a credible allegation when there is an investigation that proves the allegations that he has done it last december the wall street journal reported that a little known vatican appeals panel had been going soft on priests convicted of sexual abuse under church law in more than a 3rd of the cases said those priests had their penalties sharply reduced so much for the kind of 0 tolerance the pope has been advertising around the world but this is an appeal court in every law system you have a 1st instance and then you have an appeal so that did not exist until it was established 5 years ago it wasn't pleasing senior cardinals would have been june 27th in a vatican meeting cardinal sean o'malley of boston reportedly complained bitterly about excessive leniency this is been another trend under this pope as an excessive

means it top line in politics 0 tolerance and behind the scenes go soft on them i mean this is not the full truth he has dismissed many priests he has dismissed a number of bishops and he has established the pontifical commission for the protection of minors he has been he has been very strong on the establishment of new laws and all this has happened over the last 6 years so peace but but pellets and priests who abused are still in the church of course there are because they and they remain in the church and how much confidence therefore can the public have in all these measures that you are fighting very little it would seem that is understandable of course i myself. working for a change in this and we are hopeful that with new measures with new laws and with an education that transforms culture things will change but this is not. in an institution that has 1300000000 members and has as i said thousands of diocese

thousands of bishops and provincials and generals tent of thousands of congregations this is not an easy task to do nobody said it was easy in june last year though you gave the comforting assurance that the pope was getting to the bottom of the issues said he's not choosing 12 or 3 black sheep but rather looking at the root of the problem is asking what caused these abuses how was their existence denied how abusive priests were transferred the main thing you said is looking at the system in its entirety this was last year he said that frankly you've had decades to look at these issues your comments really sounded like an attempt to kick this into a sort of academic playground instead of dealing with the specifics you know the answers to these questions the un committee on the rights of the child told you the other but the answers were many of the answers 4 years ago but you didn't take any notice of them or absolutely i spoke today with one of the members of this

commission of the un rights tries to try to drive calm committee the country is speaking the cellist under the signal and he told me that they are very confident about the collaboration by the secretary of state at the back at the moment and they are complying with what the committee wanted them to do immediately removing all known and suspected child sexual abusers from service that was the recommendations are going to only 40 but it isn't yet it is when otherwise you would be far fewer of them who are known to many people and known to many bishops still in the church how do you understand how hard is that you know that when there is an allegation when there's an investigation and then there's a judgment and this is. but all the laws are about and this is got this is happening at the moment another recommendation ignored repealing or provisions which may impose an obligation of silence on the victims and on those that have become aware of such crimes why isn't that being repealed if it is repeated as you

see what i mean yeah i mean you know you can actually not at all the bishops are coming clean about this. i don't know they are coming along i have been over the last 3 months i've been to 5 bishops conferences and i can tell you that all of them are very very clear on all of this what they need is education and formation because many of those are from countries where you have no resources where you have little knowledge about how to deal with this despite all what you can say about human formation about spitter formation they have not dealt because in those societies i talk about african and latin american countries as well as about asian countries this is not a topic that people talk about publicly you don't speak about sexual misbehavior in the society of let's say young mar or easy south africa you don't do that for other people in the church is part of those societies and this is

a process as we have seen in the us in ireland in the u.k. in germany that goes step by step together with the society at large and is so can years and years and years to get even to the stage where people who abuse children are sick and depraved that their actions are covered up by church men who lie either to hold on to their job so in the mistaken belief that they are protecting the church what's so hard to understand those are still hard to understand and they are dismissed from the priests of isley of the abuse victim who heads the group and in clergy abuse complaint in february about you and your colleagues he said they're saying there are all these bishops who don't understand sexual abuse how do you get to be a bishop if you have to be given an education about the rape of a child good question isn't it absolutely i guess i met a teacher i met peter just on the eve of the meeting of the presidents of the bishops conference with one very 1st we where we were in one room with 20 survivors of abuse from different parts of the world and there is no education about.

necessary for what is rape or what is sexual violence what is education necessary for it how europe. a victim how you accommodate them how you help and support them and what you do with the perpetrator this is just so there's intellectual playing with the issue isn't it and it is only ok you can take it like that it is a psychiatry can psychological measure that you have to take not all of them are paedophiles we see how how great your commitment is to taking abusive priests out of the system with the case of cardinal george pell of australia don't we and this is a man who is a convicted sex offender serving prison time has he been dismissed from his lofty role as cardinal you know he has because he has. first of all here he has been convicted in 2 instances and just 2 weeks ago a lot of where there's one right there is a rape yes but he has not

a final conviction and that is what the holy see has always said we would wait until the final conviction will be certain and then there will be consequences surely as has been in other cases we are you are willing to make america was doing the same thing for the son of the you and pointed out 2014 that your church was quite happy to defrock or demote nuns and priests for far less serious offenses like violating the obligation of silence but now we've seen when it comes to a cardinal a convicted sex offender it's just find him and his position is the what's the message that that sends the higher up the church you get the more protection the more we're going to ignore these very serious some of the most serious crimes you know what happens if there is a conviction that is credible and confirmed in the case of the crew former cardinal mccarrick he has been defrocked he has been taken out of the college of cardinals and because of the public outcry you know that is what did it didn't know what now because now it started with an investigation by

a church board in new york that stated that the allegations that came forward in 2018 for the 1st time that he abused not only seminarians were other. but for the 1st time miners were credible and then that was forwarded to the congregation for the doctrine of the faith that conducted the trial the trial found those allegations credible and he was defrocked immediately and you have a convicted sex offender in jail and still a cardinal is this really the image of the catholic church that you want to portray in 2090 as i said when when you have a bad as i said at the beginning i'm not happy at all about the situation and i hope that we will have clarity once the appeals court or the high court will i didn't defined what will be the penalty or if there is any you've got enough clarity to defrock him if he by a miracle wins his appeal you can reinstate him can't you i mean tim lennon president of the survivors network of those abused by priests i'm sure you know him

as well so spell should have been immediately defrocked makes me speechless he said that they kept him as a cardinal that means he's the prince of the church the 3rd highest ranking member so now we're faced with a situation where survivors have to rely on civil courts to achieve justice because we have not seen that within the church about if there is a conviction he will certainly be defrocked this is my conviction and you've condemned very strongly sexual abuse in the catholic church but you some of your comments appear to watered down your condemnation by pointing out that this kind of abuse is rife in many other parts of society you said in one interview i follow the situation in the us and of late you have accusations against all kinds of religious leaders from different religious denominations the boy scouts and sports teachers university professors medical doctors psychologists police military and so on my point all that out do you really think that sexual abuse in the church sounds less disgraceful if other people are doing it as well you know what i said was that this

is also a problem for the whole of the society and the church has to do as you can see in hundreds of interviews that i've given. in all the text that i have written about that my 1st interest is that we do as the catholic church what is our responsibility and that we take our own field and that we clean it up do i trusted not just with this ickle protection of those in your care but the protection of their sol absolutely and this is what i wanted out of what i drive by priests absolutely and this is what i repeat over and over again when i go to to all those conferences this is one of them my major points and you you will a little progress on this at all oh i see progress in this at least with the people that we train in the center for chap rejection of this university when cardinal admitted publicly in february to your meeting with the vatican conference on protecting minors that some church files on abuse cases have been systematically

destroyed systematically important word isn't that because they mean they knew exactly what they were doing when they were getting rid of damaging information and they probably still are destroying these documents or they have done that i wonder how you know that they are doing it absolutely this is wrong when it happens and this has to be persecutor in february there were high hopes for that conference on protecting mine especially since it's taken decades for the vatican to give this kind of public importance to the issue but on on the eve of the meeting pope francis attacked those he called accusers those who spend their lives accusing accusing accusing he said of these other friends cousins and relatives of the devil then. people accusing accusing priests of doing committing these cardinal sins you know absolutely i mean if if there is a crime don't even turn up in self-service on the video of course he was there all all 3 days and a half of a letter of sure he said through all this and why was he why was he blaming

accusers i don't know what he referred to i can't believe that it was accuse article of abuse that has happened the conference highlighted one glaring omission the you was an organizer seem to have overlooked 8 victims of sexual abuse were invited to give testimony but there was no attempt to find out of the priests who committed crimes against them were still in the church why didn't you ask for specifically for that information desk not true this information is not true we have inquired you have to reckon that a good number of those 8 did not want to be publicly known that was also the reason why the couldn't give their names because they themselves have they wanted to to remain anonymous and that's why they i also had to go through 3rd persons to come in contact with them because they did not want to show their face and they didn't want to know people to know anything about what was going on but mary collins former member of the positive commission for the protection of mass at the fact

that the vatican didn't know if these priests in question was to act in the church undermine the credibility of the whole event and even archbishop charles skill cooler former top prosecutor for sex abuse at the vatican said he would try to find out because that's a very important point you haven't found out since. i have found out we know about them and are they hold and are they in the jail was one of those who told they did not give me the permission to talk about this you said in much after the conference that bishops who attended had taken some initiatives and some that revised their guidelines for cooperating with civil war for a tease. the fact is this film the absolute requirement for the church to inform the police of any suspected abuse is the yes this there is well in the congregation for the doctrine of the faith in may 2011 stated that wherever in any state or country there is an obligation to report then that law has to paul be followed

through you told the tablet in january 27th in the church cooperates with laws and legal proceedings where it can so it may cooperate or it may not know where the obligation is then we have to follow through but you have to reckon that in a 197 countries in this world the law on reporting is very different and sometimes in countries you have states that have different reporting laws nobody understands and the angle from birth that in germany the parliament in 2010 decided against a mandatory reporting law on the grounds of voices of victims and the experience are psychiatry's and psychologists where the global victims group says you're still hiding behind that argument mandatory reporting to police is a problem in some countries it said just the stablish the law for reporting unjustified exception instead you are using the exception as a pretext for not reporting sexual abuse to listen to what i said just now that i did not talk about countries like iran or iraq where you would be killed because of

the exception these are the exceptions i was talking about countries like germany like italy where you don't have a mandatory reporting law and on grounds that have been established by professional groups and even as in the case of germany by the importance of victims and by 1st of june 2019 we have a law that obliges all clergy and all religions to report abuse to church authorities and the whole world well it's only your system of church justice inspires very little public confidence doesn't it because your justice is behind closed doors and therefore no one knows if it's been done or not do the. not surprising therefore that so many people think you're incapable of being transparent and the catholic church is incapable of policing itself do you go along with that i believe that we need much more input from professionals and we need also oversight from outside and this is what is happening now for example in the english inquiry and the response of the catholic church are that they have called

for an independent inquiry and they have voluntarily opened all the files for that kind of edification but the church refuses to submit its processes to public scrutiny what we do know from documents back to 2001 is that only preschool officiate at these hearings and cases of this kind are subject to what was called the pontifical sea and exactly this is the 1st the 1st assumption that you said is wrong you have women who can precisely or over such trials lay women and the 2nd one is changing as we talk you have quoted artificial chicken no he has he is a very important figure in this field and he has called for the ending of the pontifical secret being applied to this is good for you may not happen i mean i'm not sure about a lot of time but yes i am pretty sure that after this every conference it is going to happen very soon from where we are now and december so a long way from getting better the idea that a lot within 5 months after the we have of work that worldwide law. that was

promulgated and applied to the whole church and 5 months after the ending or 4 months only after the ending of this conference so i think there has been a clear sign that this is there is some determination to move on and the problems with canon law which the un asked you to revise laws 1395 in particular which says about forced sexual abuse by a priest with a minor he has to be punished with just penalties not excluding dismissal and that's it could be dismissed. but it might even not be you know if you are normal people come along and the norm of the normal penalty is applied in those cases is the dismissal from the character said yeah but it's not mandatory it's not mandatory because the cases are very very diverse and this is the gray area that your abusive criminal priests are allowed to hide in isn't that. this is the gap

that they hide but i mean it's after the judges to to take evidence and then to judge as according to the facts at every step of this is why priests allowed to get away with these crimes year after year ever said thousands have been defrocked because of that august last year the attorney general for the u.s. state of illinois launched an inquiry into every catholic diocese in the state looking for and reported cases of clergy misconduct why because she didn't believe the church's assurances that since 2002 all cases have been reported to the civil authorities people just don't believe the chair can i stand that. why do you stay on the if you use your sad little face and you can't even get people to believe your word here i mean why go on with it you know i mean i see that their aunt may need bishops who comply with all those obligations that they have eliminated or yeah sure and this is the biggest reality we live in this church which is not. a

community of saints only they're also sinners in bed and criminals so this is the fact that you have to face reality this is the reality of the church i work for and i am in and i have grown up in this and i have received so much and you may be low and believe this or not but yesterday i have an exchange with a lady who follows me on twitter and there was an attack from somebody from another country. sort of taking me as an example of those hypocrites and so forth they talk a lot this lady is a survivor of abuse as she states on her twitter account herself and she she told me personally please keep up the work go on keep up what you do well the one song thanks very much for your company ok thank you.

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