The Guardian view on the Catholic church: must do better | Editorial

The Vatican conference on sexual abuse needs to be much more than a talking shop. Can that happen?

On Wednesday night another statue of a former hero was pulled down in eastern Europe. The late Fr Henryk Jankowski had been placed on his pedestal as the chaplain to the Solidarity movement in Gdansk in the years when Polish Catholic workers helped bring down the Soviet empire; he has now been toppled because of multiple allegations of child abuse. The church defrocked him in 2005, five years before his death, but the activists accuse it of “systematic complicity”.

The bishops and cardinals meeting in Rome to decide what to do about sexual abuse by the clergy should remember that statue, pulled down at the scene of one of the church’s greatest triumphs. The Catholic church has two problems about sexual abuse. The first is that it happens; the second is that it is covered up. Both these are shared with other institutions, especially religious ones. The combination of spiritual authority with political power is dangerous.

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2GYMv0G