Vatican Under Fire From UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

NEW YORK, November 22 (C-FAM) A UN committee wants to hold the Vatican responsible for the sins of dioceses and their clergy all over the world.

A UN committee leveled the Vatican with hard-hitting questions about sexual abuse of minors earlier this year. The committee monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The deadline for Vatican answers to the questions is this month and the Committee is scheduled to grill the Vatican further in January.

The Vatican provided the committee with detailed information on its new protocols in cases of clergy sexual abuse. But the committee was unsatisfied with the Vatican’s report. Not shying away from specifics, it asked the Vatican to provide details on “all cases of child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy” that were brought to the attention of the Vatican.

The Vatican was asked if it had conducted an investigation into the Magdalene laundries scandal in Ireland, what action it took towards clergy that may have been involved, and if it provided compensation to victims, as well as general information on Catholic institutions that care for children separated from their families throughout the world. The committee specifically mentioned complaints that youth under the care of the Legionaries of Christ, a scandal plagued religious order, were excessively separated from their families.

The committee did not limit itself to asking the Vatican to supervise the work of local churches on the sensitive issue of protecting children. It also asked about how the Vatican promotes equality between boys and girls in Catholic schools around the world, specifically requesting the Vatican remove “all sex stereotyping” from textbooks used in Catholic schools, and what it is doing to prevent all forms of corporal punishment in schools and in the family.

The committee asked if the Vatican used the label “illegitimate” for children born out of wedlock, how many baby boxes (safe havens for abandoned babies) the Vatican operates around the world and what it does to preserve the right to identity of these children.

This is not the first time the Vatican has comes under fire at the UN. In recent years, Norway and other Nordic countries increasingly assail the role of the Holy See, as the Vatican is known at the United Nations. They take opposing positions when the Vatican speaks up for unborn children and acts as a moral compass on a host of international policy issues, especially sexual mores.

Countries have criticized UN committees for adopting a confrontational approach on human rights issues and for imposing new obligations on countries.

The committee on the Rights of the Child was accused earlier this year of politicization and anti-Semitic bias after it asked Israel to conduct a study on the long and short term negative effects of circumcision. It openly suggested that circumcision, a fundamental traditional and religious practice of Jews and other Semitic peoples for over three millennia, violates the right to bodily integrity of children.

The UN General Assembly is looking at ways to improve the human rights committees. Their eccentricities are currently an obstacle to the U.S. Senate ratifying a UN treaty on disabilities.

The Vatican’s replies to the committee’s questions have yet to be uploaded to the committee’s website.

View online at: https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/vatican-under-fire-from-un-committee-on-the-rights-of-the-child/

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