Posted at AlterNet:

Vatican Editorial: With More Women in Charge, We Could Have Avoided Pedophile Priest Crisis

If women broke the “code of silence” and were part of Catholic Church hierarchy, we probably would not have had the pedophile priest epidemic, reads an editorial in the Vatican weekly L’Osservatore Romano, where Italian historian Lucetta Scaraffia says women “would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered with silence the denunciation of these misdeeds.”

Historian Lucetta Scaraffia writes:

“With regard to the painful and shameful events that have come to light concerning the sexual abuse and molestation of young people entrusted to the care of priests, we would suggest that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past so often covered the reporting of these misdeeds with silence. Women, be they religious or lay, are more likely to move in defence of young people when it comes to questions of sexual abuse. That way, the church would have been spared the serious damage that this guilty behaviour (silence) procured for it.”

“We can hypothesize that an increased female presence, and not only at lower levels, would have been able to rip the veil of male secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of misdeeds. In fact, women — both religious and secular — are naturally more inclined to defend the young in cases of sexual abuse, avoiding the serious damage these guilty attitudes have done to the Church.”

Lucetta Scaraffia is a journalist and professor of history at Rome’s La Sapienza university

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