Cardinal O'Malley responds to UN report

2014-02-08 Vatican Radio(Vatican Radio) 

Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston has added his voice to those speaking out about the recent report on child protection by a United Nations committee.

In a blog post, Cardinal O’Malley said, “I was surprised to read the accounts of the report issued this week by U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, because I would have thought that the competency of this commission is to examine the policies and practices of their member nations, of which includes the Holy See.”

Had the commission focused on that mandate, the Cardinal said “they would have been able to make what I would consider a valuable contribution, because the Holy See needs to model policies for child protection for the rest of the dioceses in the world.”

Instead, he said, “they extrapolated to the life of the Church, which is not their competency, and interjected many of their own ideological preferences. They also appear to have not taken into account the hard work that has been done in many parts of the world. It is very easy to get the headlines when you criticize the church, however, I do not think the commission’s report has been either fair or particularly helpful.”

Cardinal O’Malley said he hoped that the report would lead to “greater resolve by those in the Holy See to be more proactive on this issue and to cooperate with the new commission on child protection that the Holy Father is establishing, which is of such paramount importance for the life of the Church.”

Cardinal Seán O’Malley’s comments can be read at "Cardinal Seán's Blog" at 

www.cardinalseansblog.org .