Bishops must meet child abuse victims

Catholic bishops must meet child abuse victims in person in order to fully understand their suffering, the Vatican's main investigator into the paedophilia scandals said on Friday. "If you don't do this you will never really understand the drama of these terrible sins," Charles Scicluna, the Canon Law prosecutor of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the Vatican Insider website. Scicluna said some bishops have been asked to take part in a symposium on the issue in February 2012 at the Gregorian University in Rome and should meet victims in their countries between now and then. Such meetings will be "a traumatising, life-changing experience as it was for me," he told the website, administered by Italian daily La Stampa. He added the Church should "be close to the victims, who have been considered for too long as 'enemies' of the Church's good reputation." Scicluna was appointed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a powerful body in the Vatican administration in 2002 when it was headed by cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Benedict "had the courage of saying: 'We made a mistake, we have to change'," he said, adding the pope's comments prior to his election about the "filth" in the Church were a reference to the abuse cases. Scicluna, a trained lawyer, last year said his office had examined some 3,000 paedophilia cases involving priests over the past decade. Victim support groups have accused the Church of ignoring the plight of victims and of failing to punish bishops who covered up for paedophile priests.