The Freethinker
DESPITE being castigated in a damning report on clerical abuse, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, above, said he will definitely not resign because the Pope ordered him to remain.
This drew an immediate response from the Chief Executive of the National Secular Society (NSS), Stephen Evans who said:
This report again exposes the empty rhetoric of Pope Francis and the Catholic Church when it comes to tackling child sexual abuse. Both the Catholic Church and the Church of England have shown themselves to be incapable of self-regulation.
It’s clear that without a mandatory reporting law and independent oversight to monitor and enforce safeguarding, children within religious institutions will remain vulnerable to abuse.
Richard Scorer, above, a Vice-President of the NSS and a solicitor at the law firm Slater and Gordon which represented 32 survivors, described the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) report as:
Absolutely damning. It highlights the shocking scale of abuse, the disgraceful slowness of the church’s response, the abject failures of leadership by Cardinal Nichols, and the Vatican’s appalling refusal to cooperate properly with the inquiry.
This is a church that cannot be trusted to protect children. The only way forward now is a mandatory reporting law, so that abuse cannot be covered up, and independent external oversight of church safeguarding. The church cannot be relied on to put its own house in order, and so without these changes, children will continue to be at risk.
But Nichols, who posted a grovelling apology on on YouTube earlier today (Tuesday), has dismissed calls for him to resign, according to The Belfast Telegraph.
The Archbishop of Westminster Diocese, said he recently offered his resignation to the Pope on account of his age and nothing else, but that he was told to stay in post even though the IICSA report found that Nichols “seemingly put the reputation of the church” above his duty to sex assault victims.
It added that he had demonstrated:
No acknowledgement of any personal responsibility to lead or influence change.
He told the PA news agency:
I was 75 very recently. A few weeks ago, as according to the law of the Church, I sent my resignation into Pope Francis and I have received a very unequivocal reply, and that is that he tells me to stay in office here. So that is what I will do, that is where my orders come from. I’m staying.
Asked if he was the right person to lead the Catholic Church in England and Wales, despite the report’s findings, Cardinal Nichols said:
I do what I’m told. The Holy Father put me here and he tells me to stay here – that’s enough for me
The report found that the Catholic Church – as it has done wherever it operates in the world – repeatedly failed to support victims and survivors, while taking positive action to protect alleged perpetrators, including moving them to different parishes.
The responses of church leaders over time were marked by delay in implementing change as well as reluctance to acknowledge responsibility, to hold individuals to account or to make sincere apologies.
It highlighted the case of Father James Robinson, above, a serial paedophile, who was moved to another parish within the Archdiocese of Birmingham after complaints were first made in the 1980s. He was later jailed for 21 years.
The report also identified how senior leaders were resistant to external oversight and have only partially implemented the recommendations of previous reviews.
Focusing on Nichols, the report said:
In the cases of (two complainants), Cardinal Nichols demonstrated a lack of understanding of the impact of their abuse and experiences and seemingly put the reputation of the church first.
The report also found Nichols demonstrated:
No acknowledgement of any personal responsibility to lead or influence change. The responses of church leaders over time were marked by delay in implementing change as well as reluctance to acknowledge responsibility, to hold individuals to account or to make sincere apologies.
They conveyed on occasions a grudging and unsympathetic attitude to victims.
Failure in some of these areas contributed to more children experiencing actual abuse and many others being exposed to the risk of sexual abuse.
The report makes a number of recommendations, including mandatory safeguarding training for all staff and volunteers, and for the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service to be externally audited.
It said the subject of mandatory reporting – the legal duty to report allegations of child sexual abuse to the appropriate authorities, something Catholic Church leaders have opposed due to the “sacred nature” of disclosure made during confession – will form part of the inquiry’s final, overarching report into abuse allegations across society.
One survivor who gave evidence before the inquiry said of the report:
The head of a church should have the greatest morals of all, but instead they were sending paedophiles to other areas of the country – and America – in an attempt to cover the abuse up. How ‘Christian’ is that?
It was bad enough being abused in the first place but then to have it dismissed and covered up just takes even more of a toll on you.
Scorer said:
Cardinal Nichols needs to go right away – in any other walk of life he would be gone immediately. This is a church that cannot be trusted to protect children.
The inquiry also criticised the Holy See – the Pope and the offices of the Catholic Church based in Rome – for a lack of cooperation during the investigation.
The findings chime with a separate report by the IICSA last month, which said the Anglican Church failed to protect vulnerable children from sexual predators for decades, instead prioritising its own reputation.
Update: I have just learned that the IICSA report coincides with the Vatican’s release of the McCarrick Report.
According to the BBC the report, published by the Holy See’s Holy See’s Secretariat of State, found that two recent popes and church officials ignored allegations about the US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, above, who was later later found guilty of serial sex abuse.
The former Archbishop of Washington DC was expelled from the priesthood after the Vatican concluded an investigation last year.
The lengthy report claims that, when faced with abuse allegations against McCarrick, both popes John Paul II, and Benedict XIV accepted the word of the priest who:
Swore on his ‘oath as a bishop’ that the allegations were false.
It ends with a grovelling apology by Pope Francis:
‘If one member suffers, all suffer together with it’ (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons.
Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient.
Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.
Hat tip: BarrieJohn
I’d love a cup of coffee
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