Greg Daly
The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has expressed hope that new child protection guidelines may help improve damaged relations between priests and bishops.
The independent safeguarding watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC), has been rolling out new standards and more detailed guidelines are expected next month.
The new standards are not merely intended to be clearer about the duty of care to persons making allegations, but for the first time ever include a section on the care and management of the accused priests or religious, known as the respondent.
Redemptorist Fr Gerry O’Connor, a member of the ACP leadership team, told The Irish Catholic that there has been “a damaging of the relationship between bishops and priests because of the inconsistent approach between dioceses and sometimes even within dioceses”.
Acknowledging that there is “a whole new cohort of bishops” since the earlier guidelines, Fr O’Connor said the new standard might “offer possibilities for an improved relationship between priests and bishops, because I think there is a big strain in many dioceses, so I think this might be one issue that might be helpful, especially with new bishops”.
New standards
Fr O’Connor said he hoped the new standards would allow allegations to be addressed fairly and efficiently.
“I would certainly think the principle of natural justice must be incorporated into this because this is one of the issues that vexes people that there’s almost a different level of standards when an allegation is made against a priest than against people in other walks of life,” he said.
The new standard requires that “the Church authority has a fair process for investigating and managing child safeguarding concerns” and requires that “when the threshold for reporting has been reached, a system of support and monitoring for respondents (clergy and religious) is provided”.
Fr O’Connor said there is also an urgent need to ensure that Church processes are speeded up, pointing out that addressing allegations can “drag on for several years”, and expressed a hope that “if they’re going to try to standardise the approach that the principle of natural justice would be a key part of it and that there’s a timeline on it so that it’s not allowed to drag on for ever and ever”.