Robert Mickens - 25 June 2011

ROME’S Gregorian University has announced a major symposium for bishops and religious superiors for next year that avowedly aims to change the culture of how the Catholic Church deals with cases of priests who sexually abuse minors.

The 6-9 February gathering has the backing of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and will focus on offering a more articulate and sensitive response to helping victims.

Cardinal William Levada, the CDF prefect, will speak at the opening of the three-day symposium, which the Jesuit-run university has entitled, “Towards Healing and Renewal”. Mgr Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s chief official for handling abuse cases at the CDF, will be a major presenter.

Speaking at a press conference at the Gregorian last Saturday, he said next year’s gathering would help bishops’ conferences respond to the CDF’s recent invitation to craft national abuse policies.

Fr Federico Lombardi SJ, director of the Holy See press office, told reporters the symposium was part of a long and “serious process with a serious methodology” and not just a brief meeting to produce “papers that will collect dust on a shelf”. The Jesuits started planning for the symposium back in September 2010, according to Fr François-Xavier Dumortier SJ, the Gregorian’s rector. Both he and Fr Lombardi said part of the aim was to help produce a “global approach” for how the Church around the world deals with the issue of clerical sexual abuse.

Some 200 people – mostly representatives of all the world’s episcopal conferences and major religious orders – are expected to attend next year’s symposium. Sponsors include the Archdiocese of Munich and several German universities, one of which (the University of Ulm) is creating an online e-learning centre that will offer a shared database for best practices and other resources for dealing with abuse.

Baroness (Sheila) Hollins, who will give the first of nine major presentations at the symposium, told journalists that organisers were encouraging participants to prepare for the Rome gathering by holding listening sessions and public meetings with victims. The format that she and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor used during the recent Vatican visitation in Ireland, she said, was being proposed as a model. She said that the listening sessions were essential since many victims harbour anger at what they see as “an arrogant, non-listening Church”. A woman who was abused by a priest will assist Baroness Hollins in preparing her presentation to the symposium, which will focus on “giving a powerful voice to victims”.

The other eight presentations will be given by clerics, including two bishops and Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich. However, four lay people will be part of a six-member team from the US-based abuse prevention group Virtus, that will offer several workshops in four languages and a resource session to the symposium’s participants. Virtus assists more than 100 American dioceses in designing safe environment programmes. Among the other presenters, Mgr Stephen Rosetti (US) will speak about “ministering” to priest offenders; Bishop Jorge Patron Wong (Mexico) will talk about screening and preparing seminarians and Religious; and a team of professors from the Gregorian will offer “theological insights” on sexual abuse and the Church.


One leading church figure not among the presenters is Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin.
Fr Lombardi said he had not been left off the roster intentionally, but that organisers wanted speakers from all continents.