Irish prelate: Church must become a place where abuse victims can find healing
July 15, 2014
In an article published in the most recent English edition of L’Osservatore Romano, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin warned against complacency in addressing the clerical sexual abuse crisis.
“The greatest harm that wcould do to the progress that has been made right across the Church is to slip back into a false assurance that the crisis is a thing of the past,” he wrote.
“We can regurgitate statistics which will tell us that the incidence of such abuse is not significantly higher within the Catholic clergy than in society,” he continued. “But [because] what happened should never have happened in the Church of Jesus Christ then we have to put all the comforting statistics to one side and begin to think in a different light.”
Archbishop Martin added:
The only Church response must be one which attempts to bring healing to a wounded Church through robustly responding to all those who have been wounded by abuse. The healing of the Church comes through how the Church works to heal survivors. The Church must become more than just a place where children are safe. She must be a place of healing for survivors. We are not that kind of Church yet.
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