Call to Action: The Vatican Before the United Nations Again

I have posted before on this subject - any group should be ashamed to find itself in front of this sort of committee, but the Vatican continues to prevaricate. The present Pope has even said that no-one has done more to protect children than the Catholic Church. Of course this isn't true, I'm even finding it difficult to think of anything worse to do to children than what their clergy have submitted children to for decades. They're up in front of the United Nations again & I would beseech all magical people to work magic to ensure the commission finds them guilty of torture. It's certainly not looking good for their cloud-cuckoo dreamworld:

'The Vatican has been given another hostile interrogation by a United Nations committee over its record on clerical sex abuse.

'One member after another of the committee against torture brushed aside the Holy See's argument that its obligation to enforce the UN convention against torture stopped at the boundaries of the world's smallest country, the Vatican City state. They demanded the pope's representative give answers to a long list of questions about the treatment of sex abuse claims against clergy throughout the world.

'The Holy See, which long predates the city state, is a sovereign entity without territory. It is as the Holy See that the Catholic leadership maintains diplomatic relations and signs treaties such as the convention against torture.

'But Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's UN ambassador in Geneva, told the committee: "The Holy See intends to focus exclusively on Vatican City state."

'The American expert on the committee, Felice Gaer, made plain her disagreement. She said the Holy See had to "show us that, as a party to the convention, you have a system in place to prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment when it is acquiesced to by anyone under the effective control of the officials of the Holy See and the institutions that operate in the Vatican City state".

'Gaer described the line that church officials sought to draw between the treaty obligations of the city state and the Holy See as an "alleged distinction".

'She demanded responses to claims that Italian bishops had been told they were not under any obligation to report suspected cases of sex abuse to the civil authorities, as well as to allegations that the Vatican had given refuge to a papal envoy accused of sex abuse. In January, a Polish prosecutor said Warsaw had turned down a request for the extradition of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who faces accusations of sex abuse in his Poland and in the Dominican Republic.

'But Gaer, the director of an American-Jewish human rights organisation, the Jacob Blaustein Institute, said the church's doctrine on abortion was an area of legitimate concern for the committee. She called for the Vatican to comment on allegations that its blanket stigmatisation of abortion had led to nine-year-old girls being required to give birth.

'In February, the Vatican reacted with outrage when another UN panel argued that children around the world were suffering from Catholic teachings, including those on abortion and birth control. The Vatican said comments by the committee on the rights of the child constituted an attack on religious freedom.

'The issue of sex abuse was raised on Monday by committee members from Mauritius and Morocco and by George Tugushi, from Georgia. He welcomed a new committee to advise the pope, saying it could "begin to change the climate of impunity". But he added: "It cannot be considered in our opinion as a substitute for a functioning investigative system of the Holy See's or Vatican City state's own."' (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/05/vatican-united-nations-committee-clerical-sex-abuse)

The problem is of course that they want the power without the responsibility, & it is this kind of feudal play-acting that perpetuates the kind of danger these people represent. The reason their behaviour must be defined as torture is that it is probably the only remaining way for the church to get the consequences for the decades of child abuse it has aided & abetted:

'Experts said a finding by the committee that the systematic abuse amounted to torture could have drastic legal implications for the church as it continues to battle civil litigation around the world resulting from the decades-long scandal that saw tens of thousands of children raped and molested by priests.

'Katherine Gallagher, a human rights attorney for the New York-based nonprofit legal group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, said such a finding could open the floodgates to abuse lawsuits dating back decades because there are no statutes of limitations on torture cases. Gallagher, whose group represents Vatican sex scandal victims, said rape can legally constitute a form of torture because of the elements of intimidation, coercion, and exploitation of power.

'"The torture committee's questions really were about sexual violence and rape, and they made it clear that these acts fall within the definition of torture and the Vatican's obligations under the torture convention," she said after the hearing.

'"A recognition by the torture committee that this is one of the most significant crimes could really open up a new level of prosecutions and accountability," she added.' (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/religion/did-vatican-violate-u-n-convention-against-torture-n96986)

Peace - real peace - cannot be made by the victimised party just forgiving the abuser. It can only be made by the abuser acknowledging their wrong, which they're not prepared to do. The strange irony is that it is the Holy See's own actions that have made them vulnerable to this - by signing up to the UN Convention on Torture, presumably (almost psychotically) thinking that they would never be found guilty of torture. The plaque illustrated contains words from Paul VI's speech at the United Nations - ironic in retrospect!

------------------