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4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 FEBRUARY 2019 MATTHEW VELLA MALTESE archbishop Charles Scicluna was possibly the most sought-after prelate in the Vatican this week, as he field- ed questions from the press on the Catholic Church's much awaited summit on the protec- tion of minors. Convened by Pope Francis, the summit came hot on the heels of Scicluna's renewed role as the Holy See's prosecutor on clerical sex abuse cases, and in a bid to have cardinals and bish- ops meet victims of abuse. "Listening to the narrative of victims is essential as a mo- tivation to get it right," Sci- cluna told the press yesterday. "If you don't… you will never understand why you need to get it right. This has been my experience." The summit is concentrat- ing on three values of good governance as a strategy to fight sexual abuse of minors committed by clergy: respon- sibility, accountability and transparency. Apart from listening to abuse victims, the organising committee – which includes Scicluna – will be meeting again to discuss a follow-up on the immediate, the middle-term and the long- term phases. "There has to be a decisive and effective strategy because we have no other option but to get this right," Scicluna yes- terday told MaltaToday. The problem of sex abuse in- side the Catholic Church has troubled Pope Francis, with last year's investigation by Scicluna in Chile having led to the resignation en masse of the entire bishops' conference in the Latin American coun- try. Certain critics have accused the Catholic Church of hav- ing allowed a culture of per- missiveness that allowed sex abuse crimes to take place – others blame an institutional omertà that has seen different dioceses cover up sex abuse scandals. "You would get different an- swers in different places, so I think it is impossible to put everybody in the same cat- egory," Scicluna told Malta- Today yesterday when asked about the root of the problem. "What is important and what the Pope wants to achieve through this meeting is to bring everybody together, lis- tening to the same input and discussing the same topic, and understanding that there needs to be awareness of the gravity of sexual abuse of mi- nors and that Church legisla- tion, which has been there for quite some time, has to be im- plemented even-handedly and across the board." Scicluna admitted that changing attitudes will take time. "We have to work on cultures, we have to work on the empowerment of our peo- ple and we need to do all we can to ensure that the Church is what it should be, a safe place for young people." He said priests who are of risk to minors should not be in ministry, and indeed they should be defrocked, if found guilty of abuse. But he said there are other individual cases in which priests who have reached a certain old age might not necessarily be de- frocked but simply removed from ministry. "The punish- ment needs to take care of the common good… you have to take it on a case-by-case ba- sis." Scicluna also told the Vati- can press on Friday that he would not pin down the prob- lem of sex abuse in the Church due to the presence of homo- sexual priests. "We have sin- gle cases, not of categories of persons… one could speak of heterosexuality as well. These are human conditions which do no predispose people to sin; there are other variants… the personal inclination of be- ing a delinquent for example. I would never dare use a cat- egory as a propensity to sin." Pope Francis is presiding all the sessions of this summit, which will come to a close with his final speech. The roman pontiff laid out 21 points at the start of the summit, intended as a road- map for discussion, but which Scicluna has described as a roadmap "for policy and law… the Holy Father wants us to be very concrete about it. It is all about motivation – if you get that right, everything falls into place." Scicluna also warned that Catholic communities and orders had to get their houses in order, or risk a continuous haemorrhage, not only of peo- ple from the Church, but also of financial assets due to com- pensations being paid in set- tlements and damages. "The less victims we have, the more energy we have for schooling, for charities," he said. NEWS "The less victims we have, the more energ y we have for schooling, for charities" – Archbishop Charles Scicluna Vatican summit Scicluna is the face of Vatican's fight against priests' sexual abuse