bigpondnews.com
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 » 04:06am
Italy’s Bishops’ Conference ruled out setting up a special commission to look into child abuse in the Catholic Church on Tuesday, despite the high number of cases, its secretary general said.
The Church has dealt with some hundred paedophile priest cases during the past decade and even a single case is always too much, Mariano Crociata said.
But the bishop said there was no need to imitate the German Bishop’s Conference and create a special commission.
Vatican guidelines and the Pope’s recommendations to Irish Catholics in March were sufficient for dealing with sex abuse cases, he said.
In a watershed trial in Italy, Bishop Gino Reali testified Thursday in a sex abuse trial against a priest working in his diocese near Rome – a landmark in the predominantly Catholic nation.
Reali had been asked to explain to the court why he had not reacted when two young men complained the priest had sexually abused them when they were teenagers.