According to Al Jazeera, the International Criminal Court has been asked by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an international group for victims of sex abuse by priests, to prosecute Pope Benedict and three high ranking Vatican officials. This is the first time issues of sex abuse has been brought to an international jurisdiction, even though the Catholic Church has had a series of covered up sex abuse scandals in the United States and Europe. The three cardinals besides Pope Benedict being asked to be prosecuted are Tarcisio Bertone, Angelo Sodano, and William Levada, a United States Cardinal. SNAP has supposedly submitted more than 20,000 pages of evidence and other supporting material, but the Church has not taken any meaningful steps in making the issue go away permanently. Since 2002, SNAP has received more than 9,000 proposals, but has been unable to form a formal investigation based solely on requests.
It is ridiculous that the world even has groups like SNAP to regulate the Catholic Church and it is even more unbelievable that they have not been able to look into this matter sooner. Even after a Catholic priest was named for assaulting a teenage boy more than 50 years ago, the Church refused to remove the priest from his post. The Church should realize that if people went so far as to form groups against this, then they are not doing a very good job of hiding it and should probably see to it that this problem is fixed.
I think there's a reason it's not fixed :O
ReplyDeleteIf they admitted there was a problem, and took big steps to fix it, it would be great!!! But they won't do that because they've pretty much denied there being a problem in the first place.
The church simply has too much power, money, and prestige to bother with something like that >:/ hopefully we can topple their negligent regime one day and get the victims the validation they deserve, and the criminals the punishment that's long overdue!!!