When I first saw this story, I became ill, I could have vomited, shame on
As Vatican representatives prepare to testify before a United Nations inquiry into torture next week, a senior official warned that it would be “deceptive” to link torture with the pedophilia scandals that have swept the Catholic Church.
But the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which represents 18,000 victims, said Friday that hundreds of children and adults were still being “sexually violated, tortured and assaulted” by Catholic priests.
“Torture and violence can be subtle and manipulative. Or it can be blatant and brutal,” said SNAP President Barbara Blaine in a statement. “Either way, it’s horribly destructive to the human spirit, especially when inflicted on the young by the powerful, on the truly devout by the allegedly holy.”
“Nothing has succeeded in getting Vatican officials to stop this violence,” she added.
Meanwhile the Vatican’s permanent observer to the U.N. in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, said in a newspaper interview Friday the incidence of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy was “the lowest” among all the professions, including teachers and judges.
He said suggestions that the church was some kind of “incubator” for abusive clergy were “dishonest and illogical.”
The pope recently established a committee headed by Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley to look at the issue of sex abuse and the committee’s eight members have been holding their first meeting at the Vatican this week.