Print friendly
The Governor General will not break diplomatic ties with the Holy See, Government House says.
SNAP – a group of clergy sex abuse survivors – in a recent letter to Dame Cindy Kiro called for the diplomatic ties to be cut.
The group says Government House informed them “the Governor-General acts on the advice of Ministers, and this is not a matter she can comment on.”
SNAP has since written to New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Nanaia Mahuta.
They want her to recommend New Zealand rescind the protections and privileges it granted to the Catholic corporate state entity in 1973.
SNAP’s new open letter claims those “privileges and protections were not only unfair, unnecessary and discriminatory” – they were granted to one church only, they explained.
These privileges also “created whakanoa i te tapu o te tangata, violation of people, and a lack of self-determination for our nation.”
Second karanga
SNAP hopes the Government will hear its second karanga to Mahuta.
“As you will know, the Holy See is a legal corporate person under international law, and it maintains bilateral diplomatic relations with several sovereign states including New Zealand,” says SNAPs letter to Mahuta.
“It also performs multilateral diplomacy with several intergovernmental organisations.
“The Holy See claims a need to exercise its mission in full freedom when dealing with every interlocutor,” the letter continues. But the Holy See’s freedoms have never been subject to any critical examination.
“Thus, The Holy See has been able to escape the scrutiny applied to real sovereign states and corporations.”
SNAP told Mahuta that the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions’ 2021 interim report found the Church dominated many religious institutions for crimes of “predatory and criminal sexual violence.”
These crimes, SNAP wrote, were perpetrated by Catholic priests, brothers and nuns.
SNAP says the political privilege and immunity the Government grants to the Holy See enables the Catholic Church to conceal sex abuse crimes and impede justice for thousands of child victims.
The sex abuse survivors’ letter claims Catholic lawyers working for Catholic bishops are obstructing the Royal Commission’s progress, “despite what those same bishops are telling the New Zealand public.”
The Vatican is also facilitating this, SNAP tells Mahuta.
Although SNAP offers to supply concrete examples of its claims, none is actually referenced in the letter itself.
Political and legal courtesy
Victims and survivors and their whānau in New Zealand are not able to trust the government, SNAP told Mahuta.
It grants political immunity to a Church which uses that immunity to shield its abusers and conceal their paedophilic crimes, SNAP wrote.
“They do not want to be abused by the laws of our State as they were abused by Catholic Church leaders.
“May we ask: Will you help us remove these unjust privileges and protections from a foreign church-corporate state which is abusing our nation and its people?”
Source
Related Posts:
News category: New Zealand.
