Canada's top Catholic bishop says he hopes to emphasize the importance of believing victims when he discusses sexual abuse with his international counterparts during a gathering at the Vatican this week.
Advocates and survivors of sexual abuse worry, however, that the meeting is unlikely to produce the sort of tangible results they'd like to see.
The first-ever Vatican summit on clergy abuse of minors is meant as a "catechesis," Pope Francis has said — a teaching session intended in part to raise awareness of the issue, decades after it first came to public light.
Bishop Lionel Gendron, of Saint-Jean-Longueuil, Que., who is president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, is among more than 100 Episcopal conference heads attending the gathering that runs from Thursday to Sunday.
In an interview ahead of his trip, Gendron said he was looking forward to sharing what Canadians have gleaned about clergy sexual abuse over the past three decades with counterparts who are just beginning to acknowledge the problem.
"People want to be listened to, and they want to be believed," he said. "This was one of the things maybe in the past which was not perfect. We would not always believe the people."
He noted that his organization developed a new guide for dealing with clergy abuse that was released last year, updating previous versions of the document created in the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal at Mount Cashel orphanage in St. John's, N.L. The document emphasizes the importance of listening to victims and their families, and supporting them through the healing process.
Gendron said Canada's history of tackling sexual abuse puts him in a slightly different position than his counterparts in some other countries, who may just be starting to acknowledge that the problem exists outside of North America.
"The one who's now the archbishop in France — he himself not long ago said that at the beginning, he was one of many people thinking that the problem of sexual abuse was from English-speaking countries. But now they discover it's also in France, and it's all over the world," Gendron said.
He added that while he has met with survivors of clergy sexual abuse many times throughout his career, he had not spoken at length with any since receiving word of the Vatican summit last September. But he noted that he has met with family members of survivors in that time who asked that he stress the effects such abuse has on victims' loved ones.
"It's not only the person, the victim, but there is also the family of the victim and the community," he said. "The victims are larger than the person."
But survivors and advocates say those sorts of general philosophies — believing and supporting victims — are just the first step in tackling the issue.
Gemma Hickey, a Canadian clergy abuse survivor who is headed to the Vatican to protest during the summit, would like to see something more concrete than general platitudes — be it new policies or an external investigation.
"The church has been handling this problem behind closed doors for far too long, and clearly they're not capable of handling it appropriately," said Hickey, who uses gender-neutral pronouns. "There needs to be other elements into a further investigation."
Hickey, who founded the Pathways Foundation for survivors of abuse in religious institutions, said they're particularly concerned that the summit doesn't not allow for public participation and has no sessions dedicated to hearing stories from survivors.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a North American advocacy group with chapters in Canada, has demanded five things of Pope Francis at the summit, including that he compel bishops and cardinals to turn files related to alleged sexual abuse over to law enforcement so an independent investigation can be carried out.
David Deane, an associate professor at the Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, said the disconnect between the Catholic hierarchy's priorities and those of abuse survivors is stark.
"Who would want to say, 'Please investigate me. Please assess and analyze every decision I've made?'" he said. "That's what's needed and that's what they don't want to happen."
As for Canada's role, he said existing policies in the country's Catholic churches are good, but there is still an overall lack of transparency about what happened in the past and who was involved.
"Even though the Canadian bishops are quite progressive on this, the fact that it's still an all-bishops response illustrates its problems," Deane said. "No matter who you are, if you're a bishop, it is very, very difficult for you to say, 'Let's be transparent. Let's have every single decision I've made, every response that I made to accusations, be they credible or far-fetched, let's have all those exposed to investigation.'"
Considering how the summit has been organized, with Pope Francis's favourite clerics scheduled to speak, Deane said he doubts the meeting will produce the kinds of results survivors and advocates are calling for.
"What will come out of this summit in the Vatican right now will be well-meaning soundbites, which are designed not to bring about real change but to placate the masses," Deane said.
