The Catholic Church must make it easier to remove priests who have abused minors while giving victims "access to the truth", a papal commission at the Vatican said Tuesday in its inaugural report on protecting children.
The detailed global report from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors was the first since the body was set up by Pope Francis in 2014 to try to tackle widespread abuse within the Church.
While not an audit of sex abuse cases, the 50-page document sought to identify shortfalls and promote effective policies across the breadth of the Church to protect children and vulnerable adults.
The commission's head, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, told a press conference Tuesday that the Church was emerging from a "dark period" in which "leaders tragically failed those we are called to shepherd."
Acknowledging that effecting change within the institution was an "uphill climb", he said a transition had begun "where accountability, care, and concern for victims is beginning to bring light to the darkness."
Abuse scandals have rocked the church around the world and the decade-old commission has faced criticism itself over its role and organisation, with several top members having quit in frustration, citing obstacles.
In 2022, Francis incorporated it into the Roman Curia -- the government of the Holy See -- asking for an annual account of what was being done "and what needs to change".
Commission member Juan Carlos Cruz, an abuse survivor, thanked "survivors known and those unknown" as well as "those who tragically are not with us today.
"Many have committed suicide or left this world without any hope. To them this day is important," said Cruz, adding that the report was important for its inclusion of formerly taboo words like "trust, justice, reparations".
Progress on protecting children and vulnerable adults varied dramatically around the world, however, the report found.
In some regions, clerical abuse was not yet a "publicised issue", while safeguarding resources were "inadequate" in parts of Central and South America, Africa and Asia. It cited as an example Papua New Guinea, where medical kits to prove rape are prohibitively expensive.
Among its recommendations, it said victims should be given more access to information to avoid "opaque canonical processes as a source of re-traumatisation".
"It re-traumatizes people to have to tell their story a hundred million times and feeling that it goes nowhere," said Cruz.
The commission said it was considering the idea of an ombudsman to help victims and said reparations would be more deeply studied in the next report.
To cut through bureaucracy and speed up cases, the report also called for clearer responsibilities of individual Vatican dicasteries, or departments, which deal with abuse cases.
Moreover, the Church needs to streamline its process to remove abusing priests, with the report citing a "need for a disciplinary or administrative proceeding that provides an efficient path for resignation or removal from office".
But it provided no further details on how this should be done, nor did it specify whether action would be taken against priests convicted of abuse or just suspected.
Francesco Zanardi, founder of Italian survivors group Rete L'Abuso (The Abuse Network), said that while "many truths emerge" in the report, it was "a house of cards built on sand".
- 'Dare to denounce' -
Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has taken numerous measures to tackle abuse, from opening up internal Church documents to punishing high-ranking clergy. He has made it compulsory to report suspicions of sexual assault to Church authorities.
But clergy are still not required to report abuse to civil authorities, unless the laws of that country require it, while any revelations made in confession remain private.
Each year, the commission will review between 15 and 20 Episcopal conferences, representing local churches, and in doing so said it hoped to review the entire Church over five or six reports.
Part of the body's mandate is to help local churches to develop guidelines, acknowledging that previously "church leaders too often made decisions on an ad hoc basis, according to their own discretion and without reference to acceptable standards."
Challenges in various regions include difficulties in Mexico submitting abuse reports to civil authorities and in Belgium, little oversight of Belgian priests working in Latin America, Africa or Asia.
A "culture of silence" around sexual abuse prevents the reporting of such cases in Cameroon and Democratic Republic of the Congo, African countries where "the culture of safeguarding is a new concept".
Globally, the report said an ongoing challenge was local Churches continuing to prioritize the Church's reputation ahead of support to victims.
In Europe, despite more steps to combat clerical sexual abuse, the report cited the slow processing of cases within the Church, which await the conclusion of any criminal trial before proceeding.
Members of the abuse commission, directly appointed by the pope, are experts in fields related to safeguarding.
But two members representing abuse survivors resigned in 2017. Last year, influential German Jesuit priest Hans Zollner also quit, complaining of "structural and practical issues".
Cruz told journalists he would not have chosen to sit on the commission were it just about "public relations".
"This report isn't perfect, but... it's a sincere effort to eliminate this curse of sexual abuse and all types of abuse from the Church."