Catholic initiative urges independent inquiry into Church abuse

A Catholic initiative has called for an independent inquiry into crimes against minors in the Church, after the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference announced plans to investigate cases dating back to 1990, LRT reported.

“The essential feature of the inquiry is its independence from the Church hierarchy,” the initiative Svarbus reikalas wrote in a letter to the conference. It said people whose actions might be assessed should not be able to control or alter the investigation.

The initiative said the Church should still cooperate by sharing information, granting access to archives and supporting the work. But, it added, cooperation must not become a way to control the inquiry. It proposed either an independent commission with members appointed by different institutions or an external body, such as a university or independent legal institution. The work should be carried out by specialists from several fields, including psychology, sociology, history, and secular and Church law.

The letter, sent on September 10, set out why an inquiry into sexual crimes in the Church in Lithuania was needed and how it could be conducted. The initiative made it public after the bishops’ conference decided last week, at a meeting in Telšiai, to launch an inquiry into crimes against minors and vulnerable adults since 1990. The conference said it would consult the Holy See and Lithuanian law enforcement institutions on the inquiry’s format.

The initiative’s representative Gabrielė Gailiūtė-Bernotienė said it had urged the bishops to commission an independent inquiry three years ago and later provided Archbishop Kęstutis Kėvalas with proposed guidelines. It received no significant response, she said. More than a month ago, after new cases of child abuse in the Vilnius Archdiocese were reported, initiative representatives met with Archbishop Gintaras Grušas and Bishop Arūnas Poniškaitis and again raised the need for an independent inquiry.

The initiative said the inquiry should do more than count cases: it should establish the scale of the problem, examine the harm suffered by victims and identify systemic factors that allowed sexual abuse to happen or remain undisclosed. It should also assess the systems for selecting and training priests.

The inquiry was announced in September after courts opened criminal cases against two priests over offences involving children.