Mgr Charles Scicluna, the Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has accepted the request made by the ten victims of alleged sexual and physical child abuse at St Joseph Home, Sta Venera, to meet him. Mgr Scicluna, the Vatican's top official responsible for dealing with sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by members of the clergy, will meet the Maltese victims in June.
Lawrence Grech, one of the alleged victims, said in a statement this morning: "This is very good news for us. It shows that the Maltese church and now the Vatican are now taking our case and our pain seriously. We had approached the local church's Response Team in 2003 but, unfortunately, we did not get justice then. We sincerely hope that, through this meeting with Mgr Scicluna, we get it now. At the same time, we continue to insist on getting civil and criminal justice from our court. We have been waiting for seven years for our case to end but justice has not been done yet."
Joseph Magro, another alleged sexual abuse victim, added: "We are very happy that our cries are now being heard by the church authorities, locally and at the Vatican. We are also very grateful that this good news is coming on the eve of Pope Benedict's XVI visit to Malta. All of us welcome the Pope to Malta with open arms and augur that his visit will leave the desired results."
The alleged victims have already had a meeting with Archbishop Paul Cremona.
They said the meeting went very well.
The Archbishop offered to meet the victims and their families again in the future.
The offer was gladly accepted.
The abuse victims are still waiting for a response from the Vatican to their request for a short private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.
The victims also asked the Pope to specifically refer to Maltese victims of abuse in his public declarations during his visit.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to the CW Team or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that the CW Team agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
CW Team
SIC: TOMCOM