The Vatican sexual abuse summit, officially the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church (), was a four-day Catholic Church summit meeting in Vatican City that ran from 21 to 24 February 2019, convened by Pope Francis to discuss preventing sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy.
Background
Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions as well as revelations about decades of attempts by the Church to cover up reported incidents.Tara Isabella Burton, New Catholic sex abuse allegations show how long justice can take in a 16-year scandal, Vox, 20 August 2018 Many bishops and religious superiors have denied the existence or downplay the severity of sexual abuse cases in an attempt to preserve the reputation of their priests and the church.
During Pope Francis' visit to Chile in January 2018, he defended a Chilean bishop from charges of sexual abuse, stating that accusations without evidence was simply slander. The public outcry in response to Francis' words prompted him to open a new Vatican investigation into the case, assigning Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna to the task. Upon realizing his mistake following results of the investigation, Francis apologized in person to the victims of the case, and summoned the Chilean bishop conference to Rome to discuss the failures of the Church hierarchy. The meeting concluded with all 34 Chilean bishops offering their resignations in writing.
The following June, it was revealed that the Archdiocese of New York had found two accusations of child sexual abuse against the see's former Auxiliary Bishop, Theodore McCarrick, "credible and substantiated." Several of McCarrick's former victims spoke out over the following months, and a seminary formerly under his purview was placed under investigation following reports of widespread sexual misconduct in the Diocese of Metuchen and the Archdioceses of Newark and Washington D.C. McCarrick lost the title of Cardinal after being found guilty of the allegations by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
On August 14, a grand jury report from the Pennsylvania Attorney General was released which detailed over 1,000 child victims of sexual abuse by around 300 priests in six of the state's dioceses between the 1960s and the present. While describing the abuse, the report also indicated that several bishops responsible who oversaw those dioceses at the time were still in office. Following the report's release, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, citing both the revelations around McCarrick and those in the Grand Jury Report as a "moral catastrophe," called for a Vatican investigation into the American church with the aim to bring about "practical changes to avoid repeating the sins and failures of the past." On August 20, 2018, Pope Francis issued an apostolic "Letter of His Holiness to the People of God," citing a report that was made public in recent days "which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years."
On August 25, former apostolic nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò released an 11-page "testimony" in which he accused several churchmen, including Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. and Pope Francis, of having known of the accusations against McCarrick years prior and failing to act appropriately on them. The retired nuncio called on Francis to resign.
Announcement On 12 September 2018, Paloma García Ovejero, the vice director of the Holy See Press Office, announced Pope Francis' decision to call a global summons for a meeting on clergy sexual abuse. Francis made the decision during a meeting of his advisory Council of Cardinals. The meeting would occur at the Vatican from 21 to 24 February 2019, and would include religious superiors and all the presidents of the world's bishops' conferences. The Vatican said that the theme of the meeting would be "the protection of minors".
The summit was described as "unprecedented" and "the first of its kind".
Pre-summit events Ahead of the Vatican summit, the November 2018 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Fall Assembly was considering its own proposals for procedures on how to handle bishops who have either abused children or who have been negligent in disciplining abusive priests. During this meeting, the Congregation for Bishops requested that any votes on such procedures be delayed. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the president of the conference, expressed disappointment with the intervention. The Vatican was worried that decisions that were agreed upon by American bishops could preempt discussions at the worldwide summit in February, possibly leading to perceived infringements on the authority of the Vatican by other parties. In response to the intervention from the Vatican, Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, suggested that they continue discussing the proposals, and pass them to DiNardo as recommendations that he could then take to the summit in February.
Speaking with reporters on 27 January 2019, Pope Francis stated that the summit was intended to be a "catechesis" on the problem of abuse for the bishops who do not understand the issue or who are unsure how to handle the issue. In the summit, he would seek to impress the severity of the issue of abuse and clarify the role that the bishops must play in response to abuse.
On 18 February 2019, organizer Archbishop Scicluna stated that the summit would not solve all the problems. He said however that it would be reasonable to expect follow up, as this would be "of the essence". When asked if the summit would focus on abuse of minors or if it would also discuss abuse of seminarians and adults, organizer Cardinal Cupich said that they would be focusing on minors. He reasoned: "We are focusing in these days on those who have so little voice. Young people, minors, don't have a voice. This is about making sure that their voice is heard."
Summit meeting The summit ran from Thursday 21 through Sunday 24 February 2019. The invited delegation, numbering approximately 190, was primarily male. Of the participants, 10 were religious sisters, and 3 were women who would address the meeting. The participants also included 114 presidents of bishops' conferences, 14 leaders of Oriental Catholic Churches, 22 superiors of men and women religious, 14 members of the Vatican Curia, and 15 additional bishops and cardinals. The summit consisted of lectures and workshops on preventing sexual abuse, handling victims, and investigating abuse. The four days were divided into three thematic days, and one final day for Mass and a concluding address. The 1st day focused on responsibility, the 2nd day focused on accountability, and the 3rd day focused on transparency. Texts of most of the presentations are available at the Vatican website.
During the summit, victims of abuse gathered in Rome to protest, shouting "Zero tolerance!" Among the protestors was Alberto Athie of Mexico, one of the original accusers against Rev. Marcial Maciel.
Day 1: Responsibility Pope Francis opened the summit by warning the attending bishops and religious superiors that their constituents were demanding concrete actions, not just words. Francis said, "The holy people of God are watching and expect not just simple and obvious condemnations, but efficient and concrete measures to be established." He offered a list of 21 proposals to consider going forward.
Bishops watched videotaped testimony of five victims from Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and North America speaking about the trauma of their abuse. One victim from Chile said that when he came forward about his abuse, he was discredited and told that he was the enemy of the church. A victim from Africa spoke about how, from the age of 15, her priest would beat her if she refused to have sex with him. She got pregnant three times, and he forced her to have an abortion every time. A victim from Asia talked about how her religious superiors would cover up the abuse of nuns.
Day 2: Accountability Cardinals called for more accountability in the Catholic Church. Cardinal Blase J. Cupich called for transparent legal procedures on how to report and investigate those accused of abuse and those negligent in handling abuse cases. He elaborated upon his "metropolitan model" proposal, in which metropolitan bishops would investigate suspected abuse with the consultation of lay experts, and then submit the results to the Vatican. He first brought up this proposal in response to the Vatican blocking the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from voting on local American proposals on better handling sexual abuse cases the previous November.
Day 3: Transparency German Cardinal Reinhard Marx admitted that in his own diocese files that documented sexual abuse of children were missing. He added that he did not think this was an isolated case. At times, church administration failed to create the appropriate documentation in the first place, and the procedures for prosecuting offenses were often cancelled and overridden. Marx stressed the need for transparency and traceability, so that abuse cases can be followed by victims and Catholics. Marx also condemned the use of pontifical secrecy to suppress abuse cases.
Veteran Vatican journalist Valentina Alazraki told gathered bishops, "if you do not decide in a radical way to be on the side of the children, mothers, families, civil society, you are right to be afraid of us, because we journalists, who seek the common good, will be your worst enemies."
Day 4: Papal priorities Pope Francis ended the summit with a half-hour speech that included condemnations of the abuses by clergy and cautions against being too extreme in response to the crisis. During the speech, he said clergy who abuse children are "tools of Satan" and that such criminal behavior is "utterly incompatible with [the church's] moral authority and ethical credibility." However, in addressing the abuse, he said that the church must avoid falling into the extreme of "justicialism". Francis also discussed the wider impact of abuse, citing a 2017 UNICEF study on abuse in 28 countries. Francis ended his speech by stating an eight-point list of priorities. The list included a call to prioritize victims of abuse over the institution's reputation, and a call to stop the cover-ups and trivialization of abuses.
Rev. Federico Lombardi, moderator for the summit, announced that the Vatican would soon issue Vatican City State policies for child protection and guidelines for preventing sexual abuse of minors. Vatican City had no such policies in place previously. The Holy See had previously asked bishops conferences around the world to write up such child protection guidelines in 2011, and it had told the United Nations in 2014 that such guidelines were in the process of being written. Lombardi also said that they would create task forces of "competent persons" to help dioceses and episcopal conferences who experience difficulty in addressing the problems.
At the closing Mass, the Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge said bishops and priests will not act alone, but will work with all concerned for the good of the young and the vulnerable. “All of this will take time”, he said, “but we do not have forever and we dare not fail.”
Reactions
Reaction to the summit was mixed, with some praising the steps taken by the Vatican, and others criticizing the program as too narrow or not comprehensive enough.