Vatican vows to seek truth about diplomat in child porn case

Rome - The Vatican, at the start of a

conference on protecting children from online sexual abuse,

pledged on Tuesday to seek the truth about one of its diplomats

whom it recalled after he became suspected of possessing child

pornography.

"This is a very painful episode and a great trial for all

involved," said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary

of State and number two in the Holy See.

Parolin was referring to the case of a monsignor who was

recalled to the Holy See from its Washington embassy in August

after the U.S. State Department said he may have violated child

pornography laws.

"We are treating the case with the maximum seriousness, the

maximum commitment and the maximum attention," Parolin told

reporters as he arrived to deliver the conference's keynote

address.

He said the case was under judicial secrecy "to protect the

investigation and to protect truth and justice".

The Vatican never identified the monsignor, who is also

wanted in Canada on suspicion of uploading child pornography

from a social networking website in 2016.

He is being investigated by Vatican prosecutors and will

stand trial in the Vatican if indicted.

In his keynote speech, Parolin said the Catholic Church

wanted to "share the experience" it had acquired from dealing

with its own scandals concerning priestly sexual abuse of

children "so that it may prove useful for an ever greater good".

He said all sectors of society, including "companies that

promote and drive the development of the digital world," have a

responsibility to protect vulnerable children from forms of

sexual abuse on the internet.

The conference is also being addressed by Jacqueline

Beauchere, the chief online safety officer for Microsoft and

Antigone Davis, head of global safety policy for Facebook.

The three-day conference, which will present its findings to

Pope Francis on Friday, will discuss themes such as bullying and

the preying on children by paedophiles.

"The kids aren't alright," said Baroness Joanna Shields,

founder of Britain's WeProtect, an alliance to end child

exploitation online.

"If a child's first lesson in sexual education is a

pornographic video, then this will become their reference

point," she said.

Professor Ernesto Caffo, the Italian founder of a

30-year-old hotline to report cases of endangered children, told

the conference that 18 million children suffer sexual abuse in

Europe and that there were more than 57,000 URLs containing

child sexual abuse images.

He said that in nearly 25 percent of cases, adult survivors

of sexual abuse suffer from psychological problems, including

depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and self harm.

There was an urgent need to provide specialised training for

professionals working in education, Caffo said.

Reuters