THE needle on my irony meter leapt off the scale this morning when I read that Pope Ratzinger was praying for all young people who suffer.

He addressed the issue of children during his weekly general audience as he marked the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the first legally binding and most widely ratified international treaty to affirm human rights for all children.

My thoughts go to all the children of the world, especially those who live in difficult conditions and suffer due to violence, abuses, sickness war or hunger.

While urging all to join him in prayer, Benedict appealed to world governments to commit themselves to ensuring the treaty’s goals are met:

So that the rights of children be recognised and their dignity ever more respected.

The irony in this statement lies in the fact that the Vatican has, for years, pointedly evaded its responsibilities in regard to child abuse, and has desperately tried to distract attention from its crimes by accusing other faiths of having even WORSE records.

Although the Vatican has signed the the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls for all states to protect children from sexual abuse, it has signally failed to offer such protection.Â Indeed, according to this report, Â it has actively engaged in practices that put children at risk.

In a rebuttal to accusations levelled at it at the United Nations Human Rights Council, (UNHRC) the Vatican says that protestant churches and even Jewish synagogues have even worse records of child abuse than the Catholic Church.

Which is a blatant LIE!

The accusations were made by Keith Porteous Wood, of the National Secular Society who was speaking on behalf of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). He alleged at a meeting of the Human Rights Council that the Vatican had failed to provide the mandatory reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Its reports were now fifteen years overdue.

According to a report on the NSS website:

It [the Vatican] has now grudgingly offered to provide just one paragraph on abuse by priests which has led to compensation being paid all over the world running to billions of dollars.

Wood pointed out that the Catholic Church had an appalling record of cover-ups, evasions, moving around of offending priests and making counter accusations of lying against victims who spoke up.

He said:

The Vatican’s record on this is truly shocking. It has shown little remorse for the suffering inflicted on tens of thousands of innocent children over the years. In fact, it has tried very hard to cover up and evade responsibility. We have called on the international community to stop pussy-footing around the Vatican and to hold it to account for the misery it has inflicted on countless people. We want the Vatican to be made to face up to its responsibility and accept its culpability.

He added that the Vatican had compounded the distress of victims by constantly trying to belittle their suffering or to evade responsibility for it altogether.

Victim groups around the world will tell you that closure is just about impossible when the abusers are protected by the church and the victims are made to feel that they are, in some way, responsible for their exploitation. The Vatican really must be challenged to change its ways and to show some repentance not only for the deeds of its priests but for its own conspiracy to try to sweep the whole dreadful business under the carpet. The complacency exhibited by this supposed rebuttal shows that the problem goes to the most senior level in the Church.

In an article entitled I Shot the Pope in this month’s New Humanist, Wood describes in detail how he was given a rare opportunity to call the Vatican to account at the United Nations – and how badly the Vatican hierarchy reacted to his accusations. Said Wood:

Clearly, the Vatican has shot itself in the foot, and I am very happy to have given them the bullet with which to do it. The hundreds of thousands of victims of the Church’s cruelty deserve no less.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says children should enjoy a full range of human rights, including civil, cultural, economic, political and social ones. It says they have the right to survival and protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation. It says they have the right to develop to their fullest potential and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.

A series of initiatives are planned for this week around the world to mark the anniversary.