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The ongoing work of protecting young people from sexual abuse has received strong encouragement from Pope Francis. “This is important work; keep it up!” he said three times during a meeting with a participant in an international conference on the subject.
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”.
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Image: Vatican Radio (Facebook)
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