There are cultural differences in the way abuse is handled within the Catholic Church, according to child protection expert Hans Zollner.

Speaking to feinschwarz.net, Fr Hans Zollner emphasised that in many countries, especially those with younger populations, "sexualised violence is still not a topic that really affects the public".

Hans Zollner SJ is a German Jesuit priest, theologian and psychologist. He is also a Professor at the Gregorian University; Director of its Institute of Anthropology, Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care; and one of the world's leading experts on safeguarding and the prevention of sexual abuse.

"In the vast majority of the world's most populous countries, it is challenging to even talk about sexuality itself in families or schools, in religions or in the media" he said.

Sexual violence is an unspeakable taboo for the majority of these societies - "even where reality speaks different volumes if you look closely".

Church leaders avoiding interactions

Zollner criticised church leaders for avoiding interactions with survivors in countries like Germany where the issue is more openly discussed.

Encounters with those affected are "so disturbing and unpleasant for many church leaders and members that they avoid them. Sufferers usually do not feel welcome, do not want to risk being recognised, are under pressure from church leaders, but also in the family".

According to Zollner, a big problem is that those responsible are not implementing standards and laws on dealing with and preventing abuse in the church.

"It's probably also because people are still reacting to individual cases, and no systemic consequences are being drawn."

Fr Hans Zollner stressed that merely expressing regret without taking systemic action undermines trust.

"Trust arises when you see that someone does what he or she says. Where the opposite happens not just once but feels like it happens all the time and everywhere ... the foundation of credibility is destroyed, namely not in the sense of a personal evaluation."

Sources

Katholisch

CathNews New Zealand

As the commission moved into a palace in Rome's historic centre, Zollner expressed his hope that the commission's new home will push the commission to take seriously the principles of transparency, compliance and responsibility.

"It was not easy for me at all to leave the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and to publicly address the existing problems," he said.

"Many times, I asked myself the following questions: Does this gesture correspond to the team spirit and the discretion necessary for any working group? Will I hurt the Holy Father with my decision?"

Zollner said he experienced "weeks and months of internal tension to find the right answer to these questions" before finally deciding.

After nearly ten years of serving on the pope's advisory body, Zollner said, "it is a continuous impression on the part of victims that they are not listened to."

Without naming individuals, he said there are people in the church who "for personal or emotional reasons, create obstacles" in the fight against abuse.

Zollner cited "structural and practical issues" with the commission when he resigned.

The commission, established by Pope Francis, is currently composed of about 20 members.

Its primary objective is to advise the Pope on the best approaches for safeguarding minors and vulnerable adults, and promoting local accountability within specific churches.

Zollner is not the first member of the papal commission to resign.

In 2017, two prominent members who were abuse survivors left the commission.

The first was Marie Collins, who, in an exclusive article for National Catholic Reporter, cited "resistance," "reluctance" and a "lack of cooperation" from the then-doctrinal congregation.

Then Peter Saunders also resigned.

Saunders said he was frustrated with the pace of change and "disappointed" the commission was not doing what he thought it was intended to achieve.

Zollner clarified that his resignation was not intended to personally attack anyone or impede the work of the commission, which he called "a success in itself and a great idea by Pope Francis" and one that has an "intrinsic value."

"I've seen with my own eyes how Pope Francis takes his time and listens to victims, and he is an example of the attitude that the church must have," including its bishops, clergy and laypeople who "don't always want to listen."

Yet he acknowledged that "many victims no longer expect anything" from the church. Still, others hope to "just once meet the human face of the church."

"For me, the greatest pain is that they don't find it," he said. "If the church doesn't serve the last, the forgotten, the wounded, then it makes no sense."

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

Crux Now

CathNews New Zealand

Zollner is one of the most respected experts in the Vatican's fight against clergy sex abuse.

He cited disagreements over the way the body is being operated.

"I have noticed issues that need to be urgently addressed and that have made it impossible for me to continue further," he said in a candid message published on social media.

He said structural and practical issues within the body that led him to disassociate with it.

However, Cardinal Sean O'Malley on Thursday said he strongly disagrees with the critique by Zollner.

In a statement on March 30, O'Malley, who heads the Commission, said: "I am surprised, disappointed and strongly disagree with [Zollner's] publicly-issued assertions challenging the Commission's effectiveness."

"We do both share the view that the protection of children and vulnerable persons remains at the heart of the Church's mission and the Commission will continue to manifest that conviction," he said.

"The Commission has a plenary meeting scheduled in the next few weeks during which we can address these and other matters more fully as a group."

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, was instituted in 2014 and 56-year-old Zollner was a founding member.

It serves as an advisory body to the pope, providing recommendations on how the Church can best protect minors and vulnerable adults.

Zollner had "grown increasingly concerned"

In his critique of the Commission, Zollner said he had "grown increasingly concerned" with the Vatican's safeguarding commission and its lack of "responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency."

"I am convinced that these are principles that any Church institution, let alone the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, is bound to uphold," he said.

According to Dr Christopher Longhurst, national leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in Aotearoa New Zealand, these are the same institutional failures that survivors and advocates have experienced in the Catholic Church in New Zealand around safeguarding.

Longhurst said the fact that Zollner, who has been a member of that Commission since its creation, is only now recognising those failures is an example of how slow Church people are to learn or accept this truth.

Sources

La Croix International

Catholic News Agency

Community Scoop

"If the church did more to help confessors be empathetic listeners as well as skilled interpreters of the church's moral teaching, it would make it clearer that the sacrament of reconciliation can be an instrument in the fight against abuse."

It must explain why it does not protect abusers or other serious criminals from justice and why the confessional seal can help safeguard children and vulnerable adults. If not, legislators may target the confessional seal's inviolability, he said.

Zollner's article followed an independent commission's report that estimated over 330,000 children in France were abused by church personnel since the 1950s.

The report provoked the question that had been raised after the publication of similar reports elsewhere: "Should it be mandatory for a priest who hears about sexual abuse committed against a minor in confession to report it to the secular authorities?"

There is no "compelling evidence showing that abuse would be prevented by removing the seal" of the confessional," Zollner wrote.

The Code of Canon Law forbids a priest from revealing anything he has learned in the confessional for any reason.

While the church's poor record of preventing abuse and handling allegations has created suspicion about its protection of the secrecy of the confessional, Zollner said that secrecy makes "people feel free to say things in confession they wouldn't say anywhere else."

That "safe space" is used much more often by survivors and victims than by abusers.

"With the exception of prison chaplains, priests are highly unlikely to ever hear a confession from a perpetrator of sexual abuse of children."

Zollner said he's only ever heard of one priest hearing a confession from an abuser - "and that was on just one occasion,".

But many victims feel guilty and find it extremely difficult to speak for the first time about the unspeakable, he acknowledged.

If you cannot be absolutely sure that what you say in confession will remain confidential, one of the few safe places where starting to talk about an experience of abuse is possible may be lost, he said.

To assist victims, protect the sacramental seal and promote justice, the Church should issue better guidelines for priests who hear confessions, so they know what to do in abuse or suspected abuse.

It would reiterate obligations to respect the laws for reporting abuse outside of the confessional and reaffirm the seal.

It would also emphasize the confessor's responsibilities, including "the requirement to call on a perpetrator to stop the abuse, to report themselves to the statutory authorities, and to seek therapeutic help."

The instruction would make clear that "absolution for the sin of abuse cannot be given unless not only has sincere contrition been shown but the willingness to make up for the harm done has been demonstrated."

It would also clarify that in the case of a victim speaking about being abused, the confessor must listen with empathy and respect."

Source

• America Magazine
• Image: America Magazine

Speaking to Crux, German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner said advancing developments in technology, are "allowing new forms of abuse online to take root."

"The internet and new technologies represent fertile ground in which the sexual abuse and harm of minors and young children finds new forms of expression. This includes sexting, sextortion, grooming, and live distant child abuse through the exchange, or sending, receiving, sharing, and distribution of images and sexually explicit video content," Zollner said.

This kind of abuse has increased "dramatically" during the coronavirus pandemic.

With much of the world increasingly dependent on the internet and digital platforms to function, the number of people accessing websites that offer child sexual abuse material "have been much higher since the onset of the pandemic."

"Thus, those who work in the tech industry have an even bigger civil duty to educate themselves about abuse and how children are more vulnerable than ever before due to technology," he said.

Zollner said closer collaboration between child protection experts and tech industry leaders is "crucial" to prevention, and he stressed the need for clear safeguards on websites or platforms where children can be groomed.

At the close of a 2017 World Congress on Child Dignity in the Digital Age, Pope Francis called on those involved in politics, research, and law enforcement, as well as representatives of international organizations and religious leaders, to work more closely in online abuse prevention.

He stressed the need for big tech companies to help prevent online abuse, "to invest a substantial amount of the money they earn in creating more safety measures for children."

"Unfortunately, the resistance to do so is strong, and that's why we need to push this concern and do our part to educate, build awareness, and provide safeguarding tools," Zollner said.

Sources

Crux Now

Fr Hans Zollner is president of the Centre for Child Protection at Rome's Gregorian University and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

He wrote in response after the survivors contacted him following the damning report into the Catholic Church.

The report was produced by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).

In his letter, Zollner recognised the suffering and distress that victims and survivors of sexual abuse in England and Wales had endured.

He admitted that there is much work still to be done on safeguarding and is urging a change in the way victims and survivors are treated.

"Without voices like yours being at the centre of this process we will never be able to reach the changes and the conversion necessary for the recent reforms undertaken to take root and bring about real change," Zollner wrote.

He also urged the survivors to keep in touch with him.

The survivors recently wrote an open letter to the bishops of England and Wales.

They urged a change in the way victims are treated.

The group have received lengthy letters from the Archbishops of Southwark and Liverpool, and Fr Christopher Thomas, General Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. Many other bishops from around the country also penned letters.

The bishops and others who wrote referred to the shame they felt at reading the IICSA report. They emphasised the need to heal wounds and meet and listen to survivors.

Bishop Mark O'Toole of Plymouth wrote that listening to survivors' stories broke his heart.

He said: "Such pain, however, is nothing compared to the agony and torment that you and other victims and survivors of abuse have suffered. Your voices, and those of other victims and survivors, need to be heard consistently not as a matter of the past, but in to help all of us face the reality of abuse."

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, also apologised to victims and survivors of abuse inflicted over 50 years in the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Cardinal Nichols was heavily criticised in IICSA's final report on the Roman Catholic Church.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Church Times

Lay movements and communities have given countless Catholics a chance to rediscover and deepen their faith. But a clear separation is needed between the spiritual and mission aspects of the organisations.

In 1998 St. John Paul II recognized the importance of lay movements. He said they were "one of the most significant fruits of that springtime in the church which was foretold by the Second Vatican Council."

But not all the fruit was good. Several movements and communities have faced Vatican-imposed reforms and even dissolution.

The Catholic Church has a limited number of options for intervening when it comes to lay movements and communities. While a pope can remove cardinals, priests and bishops, laypeople can be punished only by excommunication.

Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, is a professor of psychology and president of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He told Catholic News Service Nov. 4 that before deciding to dissolve a movement or community, certain criteria should be met to indicate reform is possible.

A key issue, he said, is a willingness to have a clear separation of "spiritual guidance and external power" when it comes to decision-making.

"A spiritual director should never have the power to direct the movement or a decision for a person," he said. "There needs to be a separation between who decides the mission aspect ['forum externum'] and who knows about the spiritual side ['forum internum'].

This is a very important point which some of those movements and some of those religious congregations have not been taking seriously."

Another condition, Zollner said, is that there must be a set period of time for lay movement reform. And that a person not affiliated with the movement must determine whether the conditions of the reform have been met.

The movement itself "can't be the one to testify that they have changed because then you blow your own trumpet and people will question that," he said, "and rightfully so."

Sources

National Catholic Reporter

Zollner says he believes the reason for calling the 21-24 February summit is because "this is a very urgent, very challenging moment for the Church and an urgent question which the Holy Father has made a priority for himself and for the Church, by calling for this unique meeting."

Zollner is the head of the Center for Child Protection at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minor.

He is also a member of the organising committee for the summit.

Others include Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Oswald Gracias from India and Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, the Vatican's former top prosecutor of sex abuse crimes.

The heads of all bishop's conferences throughout the world will attend the gathering, as well as members of Eastern Catholic Churches and religious superiors.

Echoing the Pope's words, Zollner says the summit will be a meeting of "pastors" who will come together to pray, and who will "listen to be informed about what they need to do, and to own that."

While a three-day-meeting is not enough to dive into complex issues such as implications related to canon law, there needs to be follow-through on what is discussed.

One goal will be to achieve some sort of global uniformity in terms of best-practices in abuse prevention and prosecution.

"At the same time, there can be no one-size-fits-all guideline for the whole Church, because our languages do not translate certain concepts, the law systems are completely different, the political and social situations are very diverse," he says.

"If Rome comes and gives everybody one guideline, everyone thinks things are solved once and for all," but this is not the case, he said. "You need to be sure those responsible do the work."

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Crux Now
• Image: America Magazine

The annual Anglophone Conference on the Safeguarding of Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adults had just ended in Rome.

Father Hans Zollner, the German Jesuit who heads the Pontifical Gregorian University Centre for Child Protection, met Pope Francis after attending Mass with him. The Pope also greeted representatives from various national committees for the protection of children and young people.

The conference began in 1996 as a venue where representatives of bishops' conferences in English-speaking countries could share experiences and best practices.

In recent years it has become more global, with growing numbers of representatives from Latin America, Asia and Africa.

One of the United States representatives, Bishop R. Daniel Conlon of Joliet, Illinois, said delegates from countries that have been dealing with a large number of abuse cases for a long time "and have rather highly developed approaches to this issue are now working with countries that have a very different experience".

Deacon Bernard Nojadera, head of the US bishops' Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, said one of the topics discussed during the meeting was the problem of pornography and how mobile devices will only increase the ease and amount of access people will have to this material, the deacon said.

Church-run institutes and organisations will need to be "proactive" in setting up policies and installing software to counter access to pornographic content, which is known to be addictive, he said. In addition to deterrence, he said education and imposing "consequences if someone is caught" are important.

Bishop Conlon also said psychologists were invited to discuss how to assess the degree of risk a known sex offender poses to the rest of the community and how to create a safety plan for offenders that limits their ability to abuse again, but takes into account their spiritual, mental and psychological conditions "so you have a better sense of the person you're dealing with".

Sources:

Catholic News Service

Vatican Radio

Image: Vatican Radio (Facebook)