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GENEVA (AP) — A U.N. committee is comparing the Vatican's handling of the global priest sex abuse scandal with torture. And that raises the possibility that the failure to investigate clergy and their superiors could have broader legal implications.
But the Vatican's top envoy in Geneva today insisted that the Holy See is getting its house in order after a decade-long effort to deal with the sex abuse scandal. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said in several areas, the church is seeing a "stabilization and even a decline in cases of pedophilila."
He spoke to a panel of experts in charge of a U.N. treaty against torture. The Vatican ratified the treaty 12 years ago. This was the church's first appearance before the committee.
Experts peppered the Vatican with tough questions to be answered tomorrow. They asked why the Vatican believes its responsibility for protecting against torture only applies within tiny Vatican City. And they asked why its report on implementation of the treaty was almost a decade late.
A human rights attorney says a finding by the committee that the systematic abuse amounts to torture could open the floodgates to abuse lawsuits dating back decades -- because there are no statutes of limitations on torture cases.
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166-a-16-(Megan Peterson, clerical abuse victim, with reporters)-"stopping, punishing whistleblowers"-Megan Peterson says that, as an abuse victim herself, she sees plenty that must be done to protect children from abusive clergy. (5 May 2014)
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164-a-13-(Archibishop Silvano Tomasi (sihl-VAH'-noh toh-MAH'-see), Vatican representative to the United Nations in Geneva, with reporters)-"reduction of cases"-Archibishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to the U.N. in Geneva, says the Church has paid two-and-a-half billion dollars in compensation to abuse victims in the United States, and the Vatican response there has been successful. (5 May 2014)
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163-a-11-(Archibishop Silvano Tomasi (sihl-VAH'-noh toh-MAH'-see), Vatican representative to the United Nations in Geneva, with reporters)-"has to continue"-Archibishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative to the U.N. in Geneva, says action taken by the Church against abusive clergy has been effective. (5 May 2014)
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APPHOTO SDN111: Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See (Vatican) to the Office of the United Nations in Geneva, arrives prior the UN torture committee hearing on the Vatican, at the headquarters of the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the Palais Wilson, in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, May 5, 2014. The UN Committee Against Torture hearings the Holy See for the first time for consider whether the church's handling of child sexual abuse complaints has violated its obligations against subjecting minors to torture and on the Vatican on its efforts to stamp out child sex abuse by priests. (AP Photo/Keystone, Salvatore Di Nolfi) (5 May 2014)
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