Vatican-based Monsignor Charles Scicluna has revealed how the Holy See has changed its position with regard to priests who force children to perform sexual acts, The Malta Independent on Sunday has learnt.The Maltese monsignor is the Vatican’s prosecutor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles cases of priestly sex abuse.
Interviewed recently by the Associated Press in the wake of a series of accusations levelled at Italian priests, Monsignor Scicluna acknowledged that priestly sex abuse was an age-old problem that needed to be rooted out, signalling an evident shift in the Vatican’s stance on the subject.
This year, dozens of former students at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf did something highly unusual for Italy: they went public with claims that they were forced to perform sexual acts with priests.
Monsignor Scicluna acknowledged that public awareness of the problem in Italy had increased as a result of the “tsunami” of cases that had come to light in the United States.
Referring to the despicable act, he said: “I do not think it is a question of whether it is happening. It has always happened. It is important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing that the Church can offer to people who need it – both the victims and perpetrators.
“There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive,” he added.
For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priestly abuse in Italy, where surveys show that the Church is considered one of the country’s most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican’s backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.
A year-long Associated Press tally has documented 73 alleged cases of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, websites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have surfaced in the seven years since the scandal over abuse by Roman Catholic priests broke in the United States.
The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the AP tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6bn in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or e1.1bn due to victims in Ireland.
However, the numbers still stand out in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago. They point to an increasing willingness among the Italian public and – slowly – within the Vatican itself to look squarely at a tragedy where the reported cases may only just be the tip of the iceberg. The Italian church will not release the numbers of cases reported or of court settlements.
The implications of priestly abuse loom large in Italy: with its 50,850 priests in a nation of 60 million, Italy has more priests than all of South America or Africa. In the United States – where the Vatican has 44,700 priests in a nation of 300 million – more than 4,000 Catholic clergy have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.
The Italian cases follow much the same pattern as the US and Irish scandals: Italian prelates often preyed on poor, physically or mentally disabled, or drug-addicted youths entrusted to their care.
The deaf students’ speech impairments, for example, made the priests’ admonition “never to tell” all the more easy to enforce.
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