Vatican says abuse worse in other faiths, U.S. schools

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Responding to charges that the Catholic Church has been delinquent in preventing the sexual abuse of children by priests, a Vatican diplomat countered that abuse is a bigger problem in other faiths and in U.S. public schools. “As the Catholic Church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good […]

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Responding to charges that the Catholic Church has been delinquent in preventing the sexual abuse of children by priests, a Vatican diplomat countered that abuse is a bigger problem in other faiths and in U.S. public schools.

“As the Catholic Church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it,” said Monsignor Hubertus Megen, a member of the Holy See delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

Megen read the statement at a Sept. 22 session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. His remarks were sparked by a speech earlier that day by Keith Porteous Wood, a U.N. representative from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. “Most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant,” Megen said, quoting from a 2002 article in the Christian Science Monitor. He added that “sexual abuses within the Jewish communities approximate that found among the Protestant clergy.”


Quoting the author of a 2004 U.S. Education Department-sponsored study, Megen said that the “physical abuse of students in (U.S. public) schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”

Megen distinguished between pedophilia and “ephebophilia,” which he defined as a “homosexual attraction to adolescent males.”

“Of all the priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90 percent belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the age of 11 and 17 years old,” he said.

A video of Megen delivering the statement was posted on an official U.N. Web site, and a written version of Megen’s words was posted on the IHEU’s Web site.Wood said the text was a handout produced by the Vatican delegation for those in attendance.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of the Holy See Press Office, confirmed the authenticity of the document but said that the Vatican had chosen not to publish it, in order not to “add gasoline to the fire” on a volatile topic.

Welcoming the attention that the exchange had drawn to his cause, Porteous Wood pronounced himself unappeased by the reply. “The complacency exhibited by this supposed rebuttal shows that the problem goes to the most senior level of the church,” he said.


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