UN Committee Against Torture Summons Vatican on Priests' Sexual Violence

Update: See also U.N. Panel on Torture Presses Vatican Envoy on Abuse (Cumming-Bruce, New York Times):

"In the hearing, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva, immediately found himself at odds with members of the panel, the Committee Against Torture, over the Holy See’s view that it is responsible for applying the treaty only to the few hundred inhabitants of the Vatican City state."

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) reports the Vatican has been summoned to appear to before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to address the torture and rape of children by Catholic priests, covered up by the Catholic Church hierarchy.

Today, the Vatican was summoned to appear before the United Nations Committee Against Torture to report on its record in preventing, punishing and redressing torture, which necessarily included its record addressing widespread sexual violence within the Catholic Church.  Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and their attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) were in attendance.  In April, CCR, representing SNAP, filed a report with the Committee documenting the long-term harms suffered by survivors of sexual violence by Catholic clergy, and filed a supplemental report thereafter focusing primarily on Latin America.  This is the second time in four months that top Catholic officials have been called before the U.N. to account for the Vatican’s human rights record on addressing the ongoing worldwide crisis of sexual violence and cover-ups within the Catholic Church.

The next time we read of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York meeting with, and praising Jeb Bush (CBS News), or Sen, Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) running interference for the child rape and molestation scandal in opposition to the Child Victims Act (Bice, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), we should consider why.

The Republican Party and the Catholic Church hierarchy have formed a repulsive alliance out of political and legal necessity.

Dolan, the entire hierarchy of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee - past and present - should be summoned as well.