The document mentions 89 cases identified in the parishes since 2019. The defenders of the victims, who judge its incomplete content and its questionable methodology, see it as a late and insufficient gesture.
By Allan Kaval (Rome, correspondent)
The Italian Church speaks of a promising first step. Defenders of victims of sexual assault see it as a late and insufficient gesture. Thursday, November 17, the Italian episcopal conference (CEI) published the results of a first study on sexual violence committed within it. Highlighting as a guarantee of good will by the ecclesiastical authorities in a country where the subject is confined to the margins of the public debate, the report entitled “Protect, prevent, form” mentions 89 cases identified in the Italian parishes since 2019.
Its content is however deemed incomplete and its questionable methodology by retaining the abuseo (abuse network), the main association for the defense of victims of pedocriminals acts committed by representatives of the clergy. Its president, himself a former victim, Francesco Zanardi, 51, described it as “unsatisfactory and shameful”. Ludovica Eugenio, coordination against abuses in the Catholic Church Itychurchtoo, deplored a “refusal to apprehend the question from a systemic point of view”.
“Photography” Floue
Published the day before the national day of prayer for victims and abuse survivors, the report, which lists the activities of the structures implemented in the Italian dioceses to deal with the question of sexual violence, follows the Ads formulated after his election in May as president of the CEI, by the Archbishop of Bologna, Matteo Maria Zuppi. If the latter, close to Pope Francis, was then dedicated to “not remaining silent in the face of so much suffering”, he always rejected the idea of an independent commission on the model of the French Ciase, which rendered his report in October 2021 and whose statistical methods he criticized.
M gr zuppi had then mentioned two research axes to be carried out on the basis of the data collected only within the Church and over a limited period. Only the cases brought back between 2001 and 2020 to the dicastery for the doctrine of the faith, a department of the Vatican, had to be taken into account, in parallel with those identified within the listening structures for the victims set up by the Church -Mend in Italy since 2019.
The report presented Thursday by Lorenzo Ghizzoni, Archbishop of Ravenna and president of the CEI National Service for the supervision of minors, relates only to them, delivering, in his words “a first photograph”, which however appears to be times blurred and poorly framed. Entrusted to researchers from the pleasure section of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, the work was carried out on the database provided by only 158 of the 226 Italian dioceses. The 89 cases of abuse recorded since 2019 cited in the report only come from 30 of the 90 listening centers, also set up by the ecclesiastical authorities in a very heterogeneous manner on the territory during the period concerned.
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