The alleged clerical sex abuse victims have accused the Maltese Church of further delaying their quest for justice.
Lawrence Grech, spokesman for the alleged victims, accused the Church
of delaying tactics pending the outcome of the criminal court case.
“The Church’s best weapon is silence. Why are we facing more delays
when the Curia has already admitted we have a case?” he told The Sunday
Times.
The Curia said last October that following investigations by its
Response Team, there was enough evidence to support allegations by eight
men that they were sexually abused as minors and the case was referred
to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith for evaluation.
Last January, the Vatican had instructed the Maltese Church to set up
a tribunal to conduct the judicial process into allegations that three
priests sexually abused boys, aged 13 to 16, at an orphanage two decades
ago.
Judges from the Metropolitan Tribunal were meant to be involved in
the tribunal, which the Curia had said would be set up within days.
The development was seen as a major step towards the conclusion of
Church proceedings against three priests accused of molesting children
in their care at St Joseph’s Home in St Venera in the late 1980s. One of
the priests died last January.
But Mr Grech said the men had been kept in the dark about the case
since The Sunday Times reported last January that a tribunal had been
set up.
“It’s been nearly a year since we met the Pope, and since then we’ve
met the Archbishop and (Vatican official) Mgr Charles Scicluna – and yet
we still have no results.”
The men had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI during his
visit to Malta a year ago, in an encounter which was reported in the
international media.
The alleged victims also wrote to the Pope last
December to express their dismay over the delays.
“I was raised by priests and we’re part of the Church but this is too
much. Some of my friends have forgiven the priests for what they’ve
done, but I haven’t. The priests should have long been defrocked,” Mr
Grech said.
Joseph Magro, another of the alleged victims, questioned if the promised tribunal had in fact been set up.
“There seems to be complete disinterest from the Curia, which appears
to hope the problem will disappear. The least I would have expected is
to go testify again,” he said.
The men’s only consolation appears to be
the criminal case, which has been expedited in recent months.
Mr Grech said he believed it was thanks to the media’s attention to
their plight that the court case was proceeding well, with a verdict
expected in August.
When contacted, the Curia said in a terse response that the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had directly appointed one of
the judges from the Metropolitan Tribunal as a delegate “to execute an
administrative penal canonical process”.
“This process is still going on,” a Curia spokesman said.