By Carol Glatz
VATICAN
CITY (CNS) — The Catholic Church has launched a new kind of “special
forces” in the fight against child abuse.
Nineteen
men and women from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas became the first
graduates awarded special certification in the safeguarding of minors — an
initiative begun in Rome in 2016 to help dioceses, bishops’ conferences,
religious orders and other church bodies excel in child protection.
The
graduates — who are psychiatrists, theologians, canon lawyers, educators and
child protection officers — were honored June 14 during a graduation ceremony
at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.
Pope
Francis sent a personal letter for the occasion, praising the new graduates and
telling them, “I wish you courage and patience; be brave and
committed.”
The
five-month, intensive program is run by the Center for Child Protection at the
university’s Institute of Psychology and grew out of an e-learning program, but
offers more active discussion and group work with onsite, face-to-face instruction
by experts in a variety of fields.
The
diploma course includes six in-depth interdisciplinary seminars on: defining
the problem of sex abuse; children’s rights; the importance of sacred and safe
spaces; the abuse of faith in abuse scandals; the liberating force of truth and
justice; and how to help survivors and their families.
Now
armed with new insights and specialized knowledge, the priests, religious men
and women, and consecrated laypeople were ready to head home to improve the
church’s response and beef up its role in protecting minors from sexual
predators.
While
some students were invited to present their projects to the guests assembled
for the diploma ceremony, many of them mingled later in the university foyer,
talking about their research and findings, and posing proudly for photographs
in front of their poster presentations.
Marist
Brother Fortune Chakasara of the Diocese of Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe, pointed to his
large drawing of spear-wielding village leaders fending off a lion, snake and
alligator — animals symbolizing HIV, poverty and dysfunctional families.
The
warrior vs. predator images, he said, illustrated the importance of standing up
to and protecting children from specific enemies in a way that would resonate
with local villagers.
In
her final project, Sister Damiana Kasoo tackled the culture of silence in Kenya
and the pressures people feel to protect the family name from scandal.
A
member of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, Sister Kasoo is a canon lawyer at
the Kenyan bishops’ conference, which sent her and a colleague, also a
canonist, to Rome for the course. The Congregation for the Evangelization of
Peoples, which has been inviting mission dioceses to respond adequately to the
problem of child abuse, funds scholarships for students from Africa, Asia and
other mission territories for the diploma course.
Sister
Kasoo told Catholic News Service that devising and educating others about
“a prevention program will be all up to me. I will go back to deliver what
I learned here.” She said she will create programs for all the dioceses in
Kenya and then follow up in person, helping dioceses with training and
implementing safeguard protections.
What
struck her the most during the course, she said, was learning about “the pain
the victims go through.” She only learned about it because the course
included listening to and speaking with a survivor, who offered powerful
firsthand testimony of the impact of abuse by church members.
Kenyan
Father Bernard Malasi’s project looked at people’s “fear of
authority,” which prevents them from reporting abuse or deceives them into
accepting “payoffs” from the church, he said.
“They
are poor so they take (the money) and stay quiet,” he told CNS.
Father
Malasi works as the child protection coordinator in the Diocese of Malindi, and
he said it was his bishop, Maltese-born Bishop Emanuel Barbara, who sent him to
take the course.
The
biggest obstacles Father Malasi said he sees in implementing protection
policies remain: “denial — people say abuse doesn’t happen”;
illiteracy; corruption, including in the judicial system; and poverty, which
continues to be the motivating factor for some families to force their children
into prostitution.
“The
most important thing I learned is that children are part of the church, they
are the future of the church. Abuse is killing them” emotionally,
spiritually and developmentally, he said. “It kills their future” and
leaves them with no hope.
Annette
Schavan, German ambassador to the Vatican, praised “the courage of the
Jesuits” at the Gregorian University for developing needed programs and
resources for the protection of children from abuse.
“The
time of concealment and silence had to come to an end,” said Schavan, the
former federal minister of education and research.
“A
new chapter in the history of the Catholic Church” has begun, she said,
and such work to increase awareness “brings us hope.”
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