International safeguarding conference examines abuse of the disabled
June 24, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State, was among the speakers at the annual safeguarding conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University. The theme of this year’s conference was “safeguarding and disability.”
“Although disabled people might be a minority demographically, they’re at considerably greater risk (of abuse), and if disclosure was easier for them, they may actually constitute a majority of abused people,” said Sheila Hollins, a founding member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the mother of five adult children with disabilities.
At the conclusion of the conference, attendees agreed to a declaration stating that “significant questions were raised about how far the Church attends to the healing that is needed by those who are invisible.”
The conference was organized by an institute directed by Father Hans Zollner, SJ, who resigned from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2023 over how the Vatican has addressed sexual abuse. Cardinal Parolin’s address at Father Zollner’s conference suggests a rapprochement.
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