VATICAN (CNS): Given the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met online and, for those who could, in Rome for their plenary assembly from September 16 to 18. The meetings, held twice a year, give the 17 members a chance to listen to the progress report of each working group and to lay the groundwork for future action.
“It was business as usual,” Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a commission member, said on September 18, noting that everyone was in attendance, including Sean Cardinal O’Malley of Boston, commission president, who took part online.
Father Zollner noted that with members on each continent, the challenge was finding meeting times to accommodate people in vastly different time zones. That meant signing in after midnight for one member on the Polynesian archipelago of Tonga and being up before 6.00am for members in the Americas.
A statement released said members “reviewed the impact of moving their outreach, study, research and education programmes online.”
They discussed the opportunities and challenges presented by the ever-changing nature of “virtual and digital realities and the impact of lockdowns and quarantines, particularly for minors and for people who have suffered abuse,” it added.
Of the different working groups, the one working with survivors held several meetings online with those who had been abused and with family members and experts, the statement said.
That group will take the insight learned from those meetings and turn them into “a series of webinars and seminars on ministry to those who have been abused, taking into account diverse cultural contexts.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the pilot project of local “survivor advisory panels,” the statement said, but there has been progress. For example, it said the panel in Brazil inspired the creation of “an office to help as a task force for the Special Safeguarding Commission as it implements Vos estis lux mundi,” Pope Francis’ letter on the duty and accountability of leaders to protect their flock.
Father Zollner said the working group he belongs to, on education and formation, talked about the four webinars on safeguarding that were held over the summer and sponsored by the women’s International Union of Superiors General.
The commission looked at the feedback from online attendees, who represented religious orders, formation or safeguarding departments, educators and others, who said they “expressed interest in further online formation in practical matters of safeguarding.”
The group will work on “offering such online formation programmes in the immediate future,” the commission said.
The working group on safeguarding guidelines and norms previously held a special seminar in December on Promoting and Protecting the Dignity of Persons in Allegations of Abuse of Minors and Vulnerable Adults: Balancing Confidentiality, Transparency and Accountability.
All the contributions presented at that seminar would be published in the next canon law journal published by the Pontifical Gregorian University Father Zollner said.
He explained that different offices of the Roman Curia collaborated with the effort and the commission said it believes the collection of the seminar’s discussions about “procedural issues affecting the sacrament of reconciliation, canonical processes and matters of jurisprudence” will make a “significant contribution to scholarship in these important areas.”
Lastly, the commission said members would continue to help local Churches and religious congregations implement current church laws and procedures on handling accusations of abuse by clerics against minors.
