Towards healing and renewal

February 06, 2013: How is the Catholic Church across the world responding to the problems of sex abuse and child protection? That was the subject of a conference at Rome’s Gregorian University on Tuesday evening – exactly a year after the first ever Vatican sponsored symposium for church leaders dealing with the clerical abuse crisis.
Participants presented the full proceedings of the 2012 three day symposium which was attended by bishops from a hundred countries around the globe. They also outlined the work of an online child protection and awareness programme being rolled out across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, especially in countries with scarce resources to tackle this crucial training work.

Commenting on "Guidelines" developed by Episcopal Conferences, Fr. Robert W. Oliver, Promoter of justice of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said ‘The guidelines are primarily a pastoral assistance to the bishops in their task of guides and builders of the Church.’

Earlier, CDF sent a circular letter to the 112 bishops' conferences around the world. The majority of them are in Africa, 36. There are 33 in Europe, 24 in America and 19 in Asia and Oceania. The Circular Letter highlighted five areas for the development of guidelines, which are: assistance to victims of sexual abuse, child protection, and the formation of future priests and religious; support the priests abusers; collaboration with civil authorities.

Fr Oliver, in his address said that ‘the project is well on its way to completion. It is a service to the bishops and local churches as part of the CDF response to the crimes committed against the children of the Church. The Church must be faithful to his divine vocation to the service of every human person.’

He said that the title of the symposium was well chosen: "Towards healing and renewal." The Church is located on this road, which is first of all maternal and healing embrace that leads to true renewal.