Child protection expert discusses new Vatican guidelines

By Joseph Tulloch

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, the Vatican’s child protection office, has launched a global consultation on its new Universal Guidelines.

These guidelines were approved by the Commission during its recent Plenary Assembly.

Vatican News spoke to Teresa Devlin – the CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding in the Catholic Church in Ireland, and a member of the Commission – about the new guidelines and the importance of the global consultation period. 

The following transcript has been lightly edited for reasons of style

What is the Universal Guidelines Framework, and what purpose does it serve?

I would just like to bring you back to 2011 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as was – now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – produced guidelines for the Church in terms of child safeguarding. It's been a long time since 2011. When Pope Francis give a renewed mandate to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors last year, he asked us to look at developing supporting the implementation of new guidelines across the Church.

What's happened is that the members have consulted internally to develop what we consider high level principles around safeguarding of children and vulnerable people. We now want to go out and consider these at the local level across the Church. The Church is huge. It covers all of the continents and all of the countries in the world, and we want to ensure that the guidelines are applied and adapted locally.

First of all, it's really important to say that the guidelines must be driven by strong leadership. We have seen where leadership has failed children and adults in the Church. So the guidelines are saying that we have to have stable mechanisms and strong leadership to implement guidelines to ensure the safety and well-being of children, to ensure that those who have been harmed receive a warm and compassionate response and to ensure that there's a fair and just process of inquiry.

Where in the global Church is there the most need for assistance in establishing safeguarding structures?

Well, from the conversations that we've been having at the Commission, it is clear that the Global South, in particular Asia, have not yet begun to develop their own guidelines and structures for ensuring that there are reporting mechanisms and ensuring that those who have come forward to disclose their abuse are responded to with care and compassion.

From my own experience of working in safeguarding in Ireland, we are often asked to support religious congregations who have missions abroad, and some of those missions are in Pakistan, in Thailand and India. And when we engage with the sisters who are running schools and ministries there, they say there are so many cultural challenges to us promoting good child safeguarding. We haven't yet begun to grasp the whole issue of abuse of our children, and that has been echoed through other members of the Pontifical Commission who are working in Mauritius, who are working in Pakistan, who are working in South America.

So it is up and down across the world. Some places are very well developed. Some places have not yet started to address the whole idea of abuse within the Church. So it is hoped that these guidelines and the support in terms of their implementation through training and financial support, in terms of capacity building and building local Churches’ ability, that we will assist those Churches in the Global South in particular. But across the world where guidelines are not yet developed.

Will these Universal Guidelines be required of all Churches?

Well, the hope is that the local Churches will take the guidelines, will review them, will send us their comments back, and then we will adapt and change them for local implementation. They are high level principles and high standards. So, for example, when we talk about preventing abuse, or, as I prefer to call it, promoting good child safeguarding practice, that will differ in each country because there are different cultures, different norms.

But the bottom line is that we hope that all countries and all Churches, all local Catholic Churches will recognise the need to promote good child safeguarding. How they implement that locally will be a matter for them, but they should adhere to the overall principles about promoting good safeguarding, caring for those who come forward, enabling reporting structures and responding with care and compassion and showing strong leadership. I can't emphasise that enough. If we have learned anything from our past failures it’s that leadership has to be important. We have to show strong leadership and commitment through our communications, through training, through delivery of all that we do with children, with those victims who have come forward, and survivors.

After all, this is all based on what the Gospel tells us, and what Jesus taught us, about caring for the wounded and looking after the weak and the vulnerable and ensuring that children are the centre of our Church in a way that is safe. So we want the local Church to take the high level principles and to adapt them and to use them locally.

How is the Commission going to monitor the implementation of these guidelines across all the local Churches?

Well, that's a really good question and a mammoth task. The Commission will be producing an annual report starting in 2024 and focusing on several countries. When those countries are present in the Vatican for the ad limina process, they will be required to comment on the implementation of safeguarding guidelines at local level. So in the Commission’s annual report, the focus will be on some of those Churches and assessing their practice against the principles and the guidelines that we have now produced. 

Now it's going to be a long and a slow process. I can tell you from my own experience in Ireland, when we produced our guidelines in 2009, we then began a process of reviewing and inspecting and assessing practice locally. And we hope that that that will happen across the local Churches throughout the entire world.

Why is the Commission opening a period of public consultation? 

Well, I'm completely committed to this, as are all of the Commission members. We can sit in the centre and produce what we think are good guidelines, but that may not be the case at the local level. So we need to hear. will these principles apply locally? Does the language work, will the mechanisms that we are proposing work in your context? What are the cultural issues? So we need to hear back to ensure that they are fit for purpose.

The guidelines have already gone out through the Secretary of State to the bishops’ conferences and we will have an online survey which will be on the Tutela Minorum website where people can insert their views about what will work, what doesn't work, what help they need, and what more can be done to make sure that the guidelines are the best that they can be. Because what we want in the Catholic Church is to have the best standards of practice around child safeguarding.