World News | Vatican Ponders Priesthood Amid Abuse Research, Revelations

Vatican City, Feb 16 (AP) The Vatican this week is hosting a three-day symposium on the Catholic priesthood amid renewed public attention on clergy sex abuse scandals and fresh research into the abuses of priestly power that harm both children and adults.

Pope Francis opens the symposium Thursday, and no fewer than a half-dozen Vatican cardinals are scheduled to either address the conference or preside over its sessions.

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The high-level lineup suggests the topic has particular relevance as the Catholic hierarchy grapples with dwindling numbers of priests in Europe and the Americas and calls for a reform of everything from celibacy requirements to the role of women in the church.

But the sex abuse scandals are still making news, most recently with allegations that Pope Benedict XVI botched cases when he was an archbishop. While such revelations have been emerging for decades, new attention is focused on clergy who abuse their power to engage in sexual activity with adults, oftentimes abusing them spiritually in the process.

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Recent developments have shed light on a problem the Vatican has long tried to ignore. These include the #MeToo movement, revelations of nuns abused by priests and the scandal over disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was defrocked in 2019 after the Vatican determined he bedded adult seminarians as well as minors.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis told his fellow bishops over a year ago that the McCarrick scandal “gives us the moment to speak about” the abuse of adults in the Church, and to do some “mature thinking” about how to address their trauma and the clergy who cause it.

The Catholic hierarchy has long insisted that these are consensual “affairs” between adults that are sinful for the priest but not criminal. But recent Catholic scholarship underscores that the behaviour amounts to professional sexual misconduct, and that victims are traumatised both by the acts themselves and the church's dismissive response.

Recently a team of German researchers published an anthology of 23 women who describe the spiritual and sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of priests, many of them current or former nuns but some laywomen as well.

The women described being trapped in toxic relationships with purportedly celibate, holy men, unable to break free because of the trauma bonds they formed with their abusers.

The stories were the subject of a conference this month organized by the Centre for Safeguarding Minors and Vulnerable Persons at the Catholic St. Paul University in Ottawa.

"There is a growing community, a network of academics, scholars and survivors,” said Doris Reisinger, a former nun and survivor of adult abuse who has become a leading researcher in the field. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)