The Catholic Church has a “moral and spiritual obligation” to do more to help the victims of sexual abuse – and must take tougher action against their abusers, a Vatican report says.
The highly critical report from the Vatican’s child protection board faults Church leaders for not providing information to victims about the handling of their cases.
The report calls for the church to take tougher action on abusers, saying victims need reparations and tangible sanctions to heal.
“In many cases … victims/survivors report that the Church has responded with empty settlements, performative gestures, and a persistent refusal to engage with victims/survivors in good faith,” the report said.
The report also states that financial settlements should be paid to victims of abuse.
The new report is the second by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which was founded over a decade ago, with the first annual report only issued last year.
The commission states that monetary reparations are needed to help victims recover from the trauma of their abuse, along with “tangible and commensurate” sanctions for abusers and their enablers.
Compiled with input from dozens of survivors of abuse, the report, issued five months into the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, states that the Church must implement “concrete measures of reparation”.
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“The Church bears a moral and spiritual obligation to heal the deep wounds inflicted from sexual violence perpetrated, enabled, mishandled, or covered up by anyone holding a position of authority in the Church,” it states.
“The principles of justice and fraternal charity, to which every Christian is called, require not only an acknowledgement of responsibility, but also the implementation of concrete measures of reparation.”
The report covers 2024, a period before the new pope was elected after Pope Francis passed away on Easter Monday.
Pope Leo has acknowledged that the abuse scandal remains a “crisis” for the Church – and that victims need more than just financial reparations to heal.
The commission was created by Pope Francis in 2014 to advise the church on best practices to prevent abuse.
However, it has encountered some resistance as it looks to confront the problem of abuse in the Church, and endorse victim-focused policies.
The 2024 report states that the Church’s way of handling abuse cases can itself be traumatising for victims.
“We must re-emphasise that the Church’s decades-long pattern of mishandling reports, including abandoning, ignoring, shaming, blaming, and stigmatising victims/survivors, perpetuates the trauma as an ongoing harm,” it states.
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The commission is referencing the Church’s way of dealing with cases according to its in-house code, where the most severe punishment meted out to a serial abuser is dismissal.
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Victims also have no rights to information about their case other than learning the outcome.
The report calls for sanctions that are “tangible and commensurate with the severity of the crime” – and also “clear” communication of the reasons for a resignation or removal of a priest.
