Anniversary Global Abuse Summit
Title: Survivors storm Rome to mark anniversary of global abuse summit
Author: Elise Ann Allen
Publication: Crux
Date: 20FEB2020
ROME – This week clerical abuse survivors from around the world have flocked to Rome to mark the one-year anniversary of Pope Francis’s global summit on child protection, which took place at the Vatican in February of last year. Groups such as Bishops Accountability and Ending Clergy Abuse, two prominent American advocacy organizations, have put together a week of events in Rome and Geneva designed to offer an evaluation of progress made and gaps that still need to be filled.
Things got started with a press conference from Bishops Accountability on Monday, during which survivors and advocates were honest in recognizing progress made since the summit, but largely critical of the follow-up, arguing that enforcement of new procedures is still unclear, and many bishops haven’t implemented them at all.
In Geneva, representatives of these organizations on Monday met with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on Disabilities.
On Wednesday, they held a press conference about a group of Italians and Argentines filing a case at the U.N. Committees Against Torture and the Rights of the Child in reference to an Italian priest who allegedly abused children at the Próvolo Institute, a Catholic school for the deaf in Italian city of Verona, before transferring to the institute’s sister school in the Argentinian city of Mendoza. An Argentine priest is also accused of abusing students at the school in Mendoza.
Victims accuse Church officials in both countries, as well as at the Vatican, of covering up the priest’s crimes.
For more information visit: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2020/02/survivors-storm-rome-to-mark-anniversary-of-global-abuse-summit/amp/