Peter Loy Chong, the Archbishop of Suva, Fiji, has urged church leaders to adopt strict policies and guidelines on disciplining church pastors involved in sexual offences.
Chong made the comment after the Fiji’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions released sexual offence statistics for last month.
The statistics revealed there were 46 sexual offence cases reported during the month of May, 29 of which were rape cases.
Of those 46 separate incidents, 16 people were charged, two of whom were church pastors who had committed serious sexual offences.
“The only advice now is for pastors and other churches to have strict guidelines because pastors have a certain amount of power over people and people always have trust in them,” Archbishop Chong said.
“So church leaders really need to take this on board and adopt certain policies and guidelines in terms of their ministry and how they react to minors along those lines.
“The other church leaders should follow that because the Catholic Church has learnt a lot from the sexual abuse that has taken place in the church worldwide.
“We have very strict rules now about pastors and minors, and if any person or priest is involved in this kind of sexual abuse case, we have guidelines and policies to discipline them and address them in a no nonsense kind of approach.”
Source
- fijitimes.com
- Image: i.ytimg.com
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- DPP records 462 sexual offence related charges for year ending May 31
News category: Asia Pacific.
