Sex abuse prevention to feature at Vatican's family meeting

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's upcoming conference on families in Ireland will feature a seminar on child protection, after the church's sex abuse scandal devastated the credibility of the Catholic Church in the country.

Pope Francis' top adviser on protecting children from pedophiles, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, will head the seminar and survivors are expected to participate, said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican's laity and family office.

He told a Vatican press conference that details would be announced later this month.

Francis is widely expected to travel to Dublin to attend the final days of the Aug. 21-26 World Meeting of Families, where the sex abuse scandal is likely to play out given the scale of abuse and cover-up in the country.

The Vatican refused to cooperate with three Irish government-ordered investigations from 2005 to 2009 that documented the rapes, molestations and other abuse suffered by thousands of Irish children by priests in their parishes, and by nuns and brothers in boarding schools and orphanages.

Irish bishops did not report a single case to police until 1996, after victims began to sue the church.

SHARE