Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, four women—including a survivor of clerical sex abuse—two Jesuit priests and an Italian lawyer are the first eight members of the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Pope Francis established the commission in December; announcing the first members March 22, the Vatican said they would help define the tasks and competencies of the commission and help identify other potential members.
Cardinal O'Malley is also one of eight members of the Council of Cardinals advising Pope Francis on the reform of the Roman Curia and governance of the church. When the child protection commission was announced, Cardinal O'Malley told reporters it would take a pastoral approach to helping victims and preventing abuse, given that much of the Vatican's attention thus far had been on implementing policies and legal procedures for investigating allegations of abuse and punishing guilty priests.
The cardinal said the commission would look at programs to educate pastoral workers in signs of abuse, identify means of psychological testing and other ways of screening candidates for the priesthood, and make recommendations regarding church officials' "cooperation with the civil authorities, the reporting of crimes."
The first eight members of the commission include Marie Collins, who was born in Dublin. At the age of 13, she was sexually abused by a Catholic priest who was a chaplain at a hospital where she was a patient.
Addressing a major conference in Rome in 2012 on the protection of children, she said being abused led to depression, despair and deep loss of trust in the Catholic Church. "Those fingers that would abuse my body the night before, were the same fingers that would give me holy Communion the following day," she said.
In 1997, the priest that had abused her—and other young girls over a period of three decades—was finally brought to justice. She founded an organization to help victims of sexual abuse, worked with the Archdiocese of Dublin to set up its child protection office and helped draft the child protection policies of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the commission would take "a multi-pronged approach to promoting youth protection, including: education regarding the exploitation of children; discipline of offenders; civil and canonical duties and responsibilities; and the development of best practices as they have emerged in society at large."
"In this way, and with the help of God, this commission will contribute to the Holy Father's mission of upholding the sacred responsibility of ensuring the safety of young people," Father Lombardi said.
Jesuit Fathers Hans Zollner and Humberto Yanez, who also were appointed to the commission, were instrumental in organizing the 2012 conference where Collins addressed representatives of bishops' conferences and religious orders from around the world.
Father Zollner, a German psychologist and psychotherapist, chaired the committee that organized the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University and is chairman of the steering committee of the Center for Child Protection that developed out of the conference. Father Yanez, director of the moral theology department at the Gregorian, was a member of the conference's theological board.
Meeting reporters in 2013 to discuss follow-up to the conference, Father Zollner said: "Unfortunately, the matter will be with us for a long time. The church is working much more than people know, but is also the object of criticism because of its errors, its failures and the sins of the past. This is why it is extremely important to continue the work of prevention with every available means."
In addition to Collins, the other women on the commission are: Hanna Suchocka, a former professor of law, who served as prime minister of Poland, 1992-93, and Polish ambassador to the Vatican, 2001-13; Catherine Bonnet, a French child psychiatrist specializing in helping victims of incest; and Baroness Sheila Hollins, a mental health specialist who has focused her research on people with learning disabilities.
The eighth member of the commission is Claudio Papale, an Italian who holds degrees in both civil and canon law and works in disciplinary section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The office is responsible for investigating allegations against priests.
The basic problem underlying the church abuse scandal is Church governance. Canon law is crystal clear. It has simply not been enforced. Canon1395, P.2 mandates punishment for sexual abuse of the young, even to dismissal from the clerical state. Many bishops, for whatever mental gymnastics were at work, for example, to protect the name of the Church, transgressed the Church’s canon law and the dictates of natural law by not enforcing Canon 1395. No bishop has ever been punished, much less removed, for not enforcing this canon. This failure in church governance brought on this crisis by which trust and confidence in leadership officials were lost. Unpunished miscreant priests secretly assigned by their bishops to other posts continued their misdeeds and ultimately exponentially multiplied the numbers of abused young people. Canon 1389, p.2 provides that “One who through culpable negligence illegitimately places or omits an act of ecclesiastical power, ministry, or function which damages another person is to be punished with a just penalty.” That canon calls for punishment of a bishop, who does not punish an abuser priest subject to Canon 1395, p.2, This has not been done at the highest level – te papal level. New thinking is needed here. Cardinal Law, poster boy for secret transfers of miscreant priests and driven from Boston by his priests and people is welcomed in Rome by JP II, who retained him in governing agencies. Cardinal Rigali, excoriated by two Philadelphia grand juries, was allowed to retire and then appointed by B16 as his representative at an affair in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, Rigali’s Vicar for Clergy, Msgr. Lynn goes to jail for following orders and policies of Rigali and his predecessor, Bevilaquila. Some new thinking is desperately needed!