The alleged clerical sex abuse victims have accused the Maltese Church of further delaying their quest for justice.
Lawrence Grech, spokesman for the alleged victims, accused the Church of delaying tactics pending the outcome of the criminal court case.
“The Church’s best weapon is silence. Why are we facing more delays when the Curia has already admitted we have a case?” he told The Sunday Times.
The Curia said last October that following investigations by its Response Team, there was enough evidence to support allegations by eight men that they were sexually abused as minors and the case was referred to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith for evaluation.
Last January, the Vatican had instructed the Maltese Church to set up a tribunal to conduct the judicial process into allegations that three priests sexually abused boys, aged 13 to 16, at an orphanage two decades ago.
Judges from the Metropolitan Tribunal were meant to be involved in the tribunal, which the Curia had said would be set up within days.
The development was seen as a major step towards the conclusion of Church proceedings against three priests accused of molesting children in their care at St Joseph’s Home in St Venera in the late 1980s. One of the priests died last January.
But Mr Grech said the men had been kept in the dark about the case since The Sunday Times reported last January that a tribunal had been set up.
“It’s been nearly a year since we met the Pope, and since then we’ve met the Archbishop and (Vatican official) Mgr Charles Scicluna – and yet we still have no results.”
The men had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Malta a year ago, in an encounter which was reported in the international media. The alleged victims also wrote to the Pope last December to express their dismay over the delays.
“I was raised by priests and we’re part of the Church but this is too much. Some of my friends have forgiven the priests for what they’ve done, but I haven’t. The priests should have long been defrocked,” Mr Grech said.
Joseph Magro, another of the alleged victims, questioned if the promised tribunal had in fact been set up.
“There seems to be complete disinterest from the Curia, which appears to hope the problem will disappear. The least I would have expected is to go testify again,” he said. The men’s only consolation appears to be the criminal case, which has been expedited in recent months.
Mr Grech said he believed it was thanks to the media’s attention to their plight that the court case was proceeding well, with a verdict expected in August.
When contacted, the Curia said in a terse response that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had directly appointed one of the judges from the Metropolitan Tribunal as a delegate “to execute an administrative penal canonical process”.
“This process is still going on,” a Curia spokesman said.
hgrech@timesofmalta.com