From left, Monsignor Luis Herrera, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’ Malley, jurist Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, and clergy sexual abuse survivor and victim advocate Juan Carlos Cruz pose for a photo at the end of a press conference to promote the Vatican’s first Annual Global Convocation. Report on the Protection of Minors at the Vatican press center, Tuesday, October 29, 2024. AP photo

Pope Francis’ child protection board called on Tuesday for victims of clergy sexual abuse to have access to more information about their cases and their rights to compensation, in the first global assessment of the Catholic Church’s efforts to combat the crisis.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors published a detailed analysis and a series of findings and recommendations in its pilot annual report, which focused on churches in a dozen countries, two religious orders and two Vatican offices.

In its most critical note, it demanded greater transparency from the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s sexual abuse office. He said the office’s slow processing of cases and secrecy has retraumatized victims, and its refusal to release statistics or its own case law continues to “fuel mistrust among believers, particularly the victim/survivor community.”

Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the commission’s chairman, acknowledged the church’s past failure to treat victims and said the commission would work to continue to address “the unjust suffering you have endured.”

“Nothing we do will be enough to fully repair what happened,” O’Malley said at a news conference. “But we hope that this report and subsequent reports, compiled with the help of victims and survivors at the centre, will help ensure the firm determination that these events will never happen again in the church.”

The 50-page report marks something of a turning point for the commission, which during its 10-year existence has struggled to find a place in a Vatican that is often resistant to confronting the abuse crisis and hostile to endorsing victim-centered policies.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a sexual abuse survivor who sits on the commission, said the report represents an important step forward and gives him hope for further progress.

“We use words we haven’t used before. Truth, justice, compensation and a guarantee of non-repetition. “These are heavy, harsh words that were previously taboo in many places,” he said.

Francis established the commission in 2014, a year after his election, to advise the Vatican on best practices to prevent clergy sexual abuse. He appointed Cardinal O’Malley, then archbishop of Boston, as chairman of the commission.

After several founding members resigned in frustration over the Vatican stonewalling and the commission’s own internal problems, the commission has stabilized in recent years by focusing on realistic areas in which it can serve. A key priority has been to provide funding and expertise to churches in poorer countries where fewer resources are available to prepare and enforce child protection guidelines and care for victims.

The commission noted in its report that the Catholic Church in Mexico, for example, was hampered by “significant cultural barriers to reporting abuse that impede the justice process.” In Papua New Guinea, limited funding means inadequate training for church staff and services for victims. Even rape kits required for criminal investigations are prohibitively expensive, the report found.

However, its main implications were global: Victims should have the right to receive information about their cases held by the church, he said, as secrecy and long processing times often served to re-victimize them. He proposed a special Vatican advocate, or ombudsman, who would meet the needs of the victims.

As a function of restorative justice, referred to as “transformational justice”, it has been stated that victims should have the right to receive compensation for their abuse, including financial compensation as well as a public apology to help them heal.

He also called for a more uniform definition and understanding of church policies aimed at protecting “vulnerable adults” from abuse, moving beyond the tendency to criminalize only the abuse of minors. The call is in response to demands that the church do more to protect religious sisters, seminarians, and even ordinary adult believers from religious gurus who abuse their authority and take advantage of adults under their spiritual influence.

Francis asked the commission to produce a report in 2022 and said he wanted an audit of progress on what was done well and what needs to change.

The commission noted that, at least in this initial effort, the report was not an audit of abuse in the church. To become a real oversight mechanism, he said, “the commission will need to have access to more specific statistical information” from the Vatican sexual abuse office, which receives all credible reports of abuse of minors in the church but apparently does not provide the data. to the commission.

One of the commission members, legal expert Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, acknowledged that the report was “far from perfect.”

“It has a solid methodology that will only grow over time to become more comprehensive and robust,” he said, adding that the data could be “significantly improved” by cross-referencing external sources.

Anne Barrett Boyle of BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy group that tracks abusers, said the commission’s findings were “hampered by their limited purpose.”

“The only safety test that matters is whether bishops remove abusers,” he said. “The report doesn’t give any measure of that because the commission itself doesn’t have the power to do that.”

The commission called for greater cooperation and dialogue with the Vatican sexual abuse office and said it was “glad to see the dicastery exploring what steps can be taken” to help bishops and religious superiors deal with victims.

It also called for the office to make its work more public, including at academic lectures and conferences, and to provide bishops with more materials to help them administer justice.

Francis earlier this year allowed O’Malley to retire five years beyond the normal retirement age for bishops and recently hinted that leadership of the commission would pass to the current No. 2 official, Bishop Luis Manuel Ali Herrera.