Bishop warns of priest sex abuse cases in Asia

Friday, February 10, 2012

ROME, Italy (AP) — A culture of silence across Asia may be keeping many victims of clergy sex abuse there from coming forward, a top Asian church official told a Vatican-backed conference yesterday.

Monsignor Luis Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila, said Asian deference to church authorities in places like the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Philippines may also have contributed to keeping a lid on reports. He said more and more victims have spoken out in the past five years in the Philippines, but incidents of priests keeping mistresses still far outpace reports of priests preying on children.

Tagle addressed priests and bishops from 110 dioceses and 30 religious orders around the world who came to the four-day conference in Rome to learn how to craft guidelines on how to care for victims, investigate abuse allegations and keep paedophiles out of the priesthood. The Vatican has set a May deadline for the policies to be submitted to Rome for review.

Tagle's presentation made clear that the sex abuse scandal — which first erupted in Ireland in the 1990s, the US in 2002, and Europe at large in 2010 — hadn't reached Asia in significant proportions. But the concern is very real that it might: In November, the federation of Asian bishops' conferences said the Asian church had to take "drastic and immediate measures" to address the problem.

"Though the issue of the child abuse crisis has yet to come into the open in the societies of Asian countries, as it has happened in the West or in other continents of the world... it appears it will not be too late before it might come to (a) similar situation in Asia," the federation said.

Tagle said he didn't know if the steady increase in victims coming forward over the last five years was "a prelude to an explosion", but he acknowledged that the reported cases are probably a fraction of the total.

"The relative silence with which the victims and Asian Catholics face the scandal is partly due to the culture of 'shame' that holds dearly one's humanity, honour and dignity," he told his fellow bishops. "For Asian cultures, a person's shame tarnishes one's family, clan and community. Silence could be a way of preserving what is left of one's honour."

That culture of silence is compounded by other cultural differences. Filipinos have a "touching culture", he said. The faithful kiss their pastors and appreciate "a gentle touch from their pastors too".

"We touch children a lot. But they cannot clearly distinguish an affectionate touch from a malicious one. They are vulnerable to manipulation through touch," he said.

Tagle said mandatory reporting laws, which would compel bishops or religious superiors to report accusations of abuse to police, would be "difficult culturally" to swallow in many Asian countries where victims may prefer to seek justice discreetly within the church's own legal system.

He also suggested that Asian bishops, who have paternal and fraternal relationships with their priests, would find it difficult to turn over an accused priest to police.