Colombia cardinal assumes responsibility over widespread sexual abuse in church

Cardinal Ruben Salazar (Image: Infovaticana)

The leader of the Catholic Church in Colombia, cardinal Ruben Salazar, said Thursday that the church had failed victims of child abuse.

In an extraordinarily harsh judgement of his own church’s failures to effectively attend the years-long crisis, Salazar told other cardinals united at the Vatican for a summit on sexual abuse that “we must recognize the enemy within.”

Cardinal Ruben Salazar

Salazar was one of more than a 100 top clergy who had been summoned to the Vatican by Pope Francis to discuss a coordinated response to the growing number of scandals regarding sexual abuse.

During his intervention, Salazar admitted that “many times the Church – in the persons of its bishops – did not know and still, at times, does not know how to behave as it should in order to face quickly and decisively the crisis caused by abuses.”

Cardinal Ruben Salazar

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“The rights of the victimizers may never come before those of the victims,” Salazar told the other cardinals and urged to transfer sexual abuse cases to civilian authorities rather than church authorities.

Cardinal Ruben Salazar

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