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| Pope Francis has said the Catholic Church had been "wounded" by a deepening clergy sex abuse crisis, and has met privately with sex abuse victims (AFP Photo/Andreas SOLARO) |
Rome (AFP)
- "So many children have been abused," sighs Vincent Moba, a Zambian
Catholic priest who has just graduated from Rome's Pontifical Gregorian
University with a diploma in safeguarding children.
Moba, 47,
has completed the five-month curriculum at the Centre for the Protection of
Minors to join a worldwide network of experts fighting sexual abuse at all
levels of society.
Jesuit
priest Hans Zollner, a German psychologist and psychotherapist abuse
specialist, is in charge of the study programme, which has awarded diplomas to
around 80 students, priests, nuns and lay people over the last four years.
On
Wednesday, the latest group graduated from 13 countries including South Africa,
Kenya, India and Thailand having completed studies in psychology, psychiatry,
law, sociology and theology.
Six of them
will this year enrol in a new Masters programme in safeguarding children.
Zollner is
also one of the organisers of next week's Vatican global child abuse summit to
discuss how to protect minors, called for by Pope Francis.
"What
I have picked up here is massive, for me to share with our people," said
Moba, slamming what he calls a "culture of denial" towards abuse in
his country.
"Some
people think for example if I sleep with a minor I will be cured of HIV and
AIDS, or become a rich person," he said.
"These
beliefs are destroying my culture," said the priest, who worked for 12
years in South Africa and has now been sent by his congregation to
"participate in this crusade against sexual abuse in the Church."
Among this
year's graduates, mainly from Asia and Africa, is Martina Vintrova, a Czech
judge and lawyer specialised in canonical law.
She asked
her bishop if she could come to follow the course at the Gregorian University,
founded in the 16th century.
"I met
victims of sexual abuse in the Church. They just started to come to me, maybe
because I am a woman and a canonist at the same time.
"And I started to help them. I realised I would need a more complete education, because it is not easy work," she said.
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The
Catholic Church's Centre for Child Protection is located at the Pontifical
Gregorian
University in Rome, a Jesuit university founded in 1551 by Saint
Ignatius of Loyola
(AFP Photo/GABRIEL BOUYS)
|
"And I started to help them. I realised I would need a more complete education, because it is not easy work," she said.
'Unaware
of problem'
"In
our country we are not aware of this problem. People, priests and even bishops
don't believe it is such a big problem. I can see from my level it is a
problem. We wait for our own scandal in the future, maybe."
The course
will make it "easier to speak to victims", says the ardent Catholic.
"I
hope it will make me more sensitive: how to speak to them, choose the right
words, what not to say and what to say... it is a challenge for us to do
everything we can to stop this."
Zollner
says it is "a combination of theory and practice", including for
instance "in psychology we teach what may be signs of abuse that has
happened, or that is about to happen."
"We
know that in all parts of the world there have been cases of abuse. That is why
we need to have experts on the ground, Africans who talk to Africans, Asians
who talk to Asians.
"They
have the language to talk about sexual misbehaviour, they know about the
cultural differences".
"We
want to train people from countries and continents where there is very little
expertise in safeguarding children," he added.
Zollner
spends much of his time travelling around the world talking about abuse.
"It is
changing: I have travelled to 60 countries on all continents over the last
years with this topic. I've seen the change."
But there
are still countries where dealing with abuse is problematic.
"In a
Buddhist country like Myanmar or in a very Confucian society like South Korea
talking about sexuality is still taboo -- as much as it is in some parts of the
Catholic Church," he said.
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