Vatican to publish Irish Church abuse report in 2012

Vatican City, Jun 6, 2011 / (CNA/EWTN News).-

The first phase of the apostolic visitation investigating clergy abuse in Ireland has concluded with the announcement that an overall synthesis of its results and recommendations will be published by early 2012.

The report will focus on the nationwide mission of renewal announced by Pope Benedict XVI in his March 2010 pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, the Vatican said June 6.

The investigators, known as “visitators,” had set out to examine the effectiveness of the present response to cases of abuse and the current forms of assistance provided to abuse victims.

They also considered the prospects of the “profound spiritual renewal” presently being pursued by the Church in Ireland.

Because of the initial evaluation, the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for Catholic Education do not envisage further apostolic visitations. The visitors meetings with various organizations and individuals, including the local bishops, provided “a sufficiently complete picture of the situation of the Irish Church” concerning the areas under investigation.

The relevant Vatican dicasteries, or departments, will give indications to the bishops for the “spiritual renewal” of the dioceses and seminaries. The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life will provide similar recommendations for the religious institutes.

The congregation has analyzed responses to the visitation’s questionnaires sent to all institutes with religious houses in Ireland. Visits to some religious communities will follow.

The Vatican said that the visitation to the four metropolitan archdioceses of Ireland, the seminaries and the religious institutes was “very useful” because of the cooperation of everyone who took part.

“The Holy Father's sincere thanks goes to them, especially to the four Metropolitan Archbishops,” the Vatican said.

In April media reports speculated that the visitors would recommend the closure of the national seminary at Maynooth in county Kildare. The seminary authorities dismissed the reports as “without foundation.”

The four-man team heading the investigation into four of the key dioceses of Ireland consisted of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto, Archbishop Terence Prendergast, S.J., of Ottawa and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the former Archbishop of Westminster, England.

A parallel investigation has examined religious institutes.

The apostolic visitors have conducted penitential services in Ireland seeking forgiveness for the abuse of hundreds of children by priests and religious over several decades.

In February, Cardinal O’Malley spoke of a “window of opportunity” to build a “holier church” in response to the abuse crisis.

And a spokesman for Archbishop Dolan told CNA that after his interviews with 113 Irish seminarians he sees “much hope for the renewal of the faith in Ireland.”

Pope Benedict’s 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland asked victims’ forgiveness and expressed “shame and remorse” over the abuse.

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Thirty years after AIDS discovery, appreciation growing for Catholic approach

Rome, Italy, Jun 5, 2011 / (CNA/EWTN News).-

The Vatican’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva says that 30 years after the discovery of AIDS, international relief agencies and faith-based groups are beginning to show an openness to the Catholic solution for the illness.

“We are at the beginning of a convergence in the sense that functionaries of international institutions and organizations and people from faith-based groups are talking across the lines and coming to respect each other a bit more,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told CNA.

Archbishop Tomasi’s comments come three decades after the first medical paper recognizing the illness was published in the U.S.

Based on a study of homosexual men in California and New York, the new ailment was initially labelled GRID, or Gay-related Immune Deficiency. Since then, the U.N. estimates that 65 million people worldwide have been infected by HIV/AIDS, with over 25 million killed.

The most significant point of departure between the Catholic Church and many other bodies involved in the fight against AIDS is over the use of condoms as a preventative measure.

“It has been proven and even documented now that the really effective way is to change your behaviour. And so, this has been our insistence,” Archbishop Tomasi said, stressing the Catholic Church’s emphasis on behavioral change over condom-distribution.

His comments also come in the week that a new report suggests millions of people are dying from AIDS because Western governments are refusing to accept that condoms are ineffective in curbing the spread of the disease.

The report, entitled “The Catholic Church and the Global AIDS Crisis,” is the work of the American public health expert Matthew Hanley.

“We are always told that condoms are the best known ‘technical’ means for preventing HIV transmission, but we are never told that condom promotion has failed to reverse those most severe African epidemics; behavioral modification, on the other hand, has brought them down,” says Hanley.

Hanley estimates that six million infections would have been averted in sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade if the Catholic approach of fidelity and abstinence had been promoted instead of widespread condom use.

“That this is not common knowledge should give us pause. Public health leaders may increasingly recognize this reality – but remain, by and large, reluctant to emphasize behavioral approaches to AIDS control over technical solutions.”

Hanley’s report also claims that in east Africa, Uganda saw a 10 percent drop in the number of people with AIDS between 1991 and 2001 after investing in abstinence programs. The rates of infection only began to climb again when foreign donor agencies insisted on the increased use of condoms in the fight against AIDS.

Last month the Vatican held a two-day conference on how best to tackle the AIDS epidemic. It was aimed at finding common ground on the issue and included contributions from those who disagree with the Catholic Church.