Safeguarding chief welcomes fast Vatican abuse case handling

The Vatican department that tackles the cases of priests accused of abuse has accelerated its handling of such cases, the head of Ireland’s child protection board has said.

Teresa Devlin, CEO of the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC), told The Irish Catholic that she believed the development was connected with the appointment a month ago of Dublin priest Msgr John Kennedy as head of the disciplinary section in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Assistant

Msgr Kennedy has worked in the CDF since 2003, and had been an assistant to the previous head of the disciplinary section, Fr Miguel Funes Diaz.

“I understand from people working on the ground that Msgr Kennedy has been in touch and has been progressing a number of cases much more quickly than has been the case,” Mrs Devlin said, noting that she had drawn attention to the issue of delays in the CDF when she addressed Australia’s royal commission on institutional abuse.

Reluctant to take credit for the subsequent acceleration in case-handling by the CDF, she said: “If that’s due to me that would be great – I don’t know if it is or not, but certainly a number of people have contacted me to say that cases that have sat a while have now taken just weeks to progress. It’s fabulous, I’m delighted with that.”

In her submission to the Australian commission, she said the CDF disciplinary section was overworked and understaffed, with the effect that the average case could take two to three years to be processed, and called on Ireland’s bishops to push for more resources to be given to the Vatican department to enable justice be served more promptly.

Complainant

“As I said in Australia, anything that ensures justice for the complainant, the accused and the Church authority is good news in my opinion,” she said, continuing, “cases that are sat around in limbo for years on years are just destructive for everybody, so I’m very pleased that this is now happening, that the Irish cases are now being dealt with more expeditiously.”