Greg Daly
Expressions of support for Marie Collins from members of the Vatican’s child protection commission are a “validation” for her position, the former commission member has said.
Mrs Collins stepped down last month from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors after almost three months on the body of which she had been a founder member, saying she had grown frustrated with “resistance” from members of the Vatican bureaucracy, with the last straw being a refusal by members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to respond to survivors’ letters.
Last weekend the commission expressed support for Mrs Collins, with French child psychiatrist Catherine Bonnet saying, “what Marie has said is the truth. It is more than the voice of a survivor. She has a general view of what is needed.”
Mrs Collins told The Irish Catholic: “It’s simply that there’s been a lot of misinformation put out there from various sources in the Vatican that I don’t really understand how the Vatican works,” adding: “It’s validation for me that the members have come out and said that I was right”.
Objective
“I knew that I was telling the truth,” she said, continuing, “for someone else on the commission coming out and saying I was telling the truth is important.
“It takes away all that idea that because I was a survivor I was emotional and couldn’t be objective,” she added, admitting that even if difficulties with curial resistance may have taken an emotional toll, she said, “it just didn’t get in the way or stop me from doing things objectively”.
Commenting on the commission’s press release, she said the commission’s ongoing effort to push Vatican departments to answer letters further validated what she had said, describing the Vatican’s failure to find a way to address survivors’ letters as “ludicrous”.
Mrs Collins also noted how the commission head, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, had said he hoped new mechanisms to hold negligent bishops to account would be successful.
“It shouldn’t be down to hope nowadays,” she said, continuing, “it should be down in black and white. Either it’s going to work and Church leaders are going to be held accountable, or it’s not – it can’t all be up in the air.”