Keystone-SDA
The president of the Swiss Bishops Conference, Charles MOREROD, wants to introduce a national register for the clergy. “Each parish can thus check by smartphone if there are reproaches or restrictions,” said Mgr Morerod in an interview.
(Keystone-ATS) Such a system is currently implemented in its diocese of Lausanne, Geneva, Friborg, said Monsignor Moreod in an interview published Thursday in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
The bishop took France as a model, noting that a digital system already existed there. The priests would receive an identity card with a QR code. During a recruitment, the parishes could thus verify if there are history concerned the person concerned.
According to Mgr Morerod, everyone is not yet convinced by this system within the episcopal conference, this French system being less known in German -speaking Switzerland. “But the process is launched,” he added.
“A learning process”
The management of cases of abuse by the Roman Catholic Church has been a subject that comes up constantly on the agenda, since the publication of a study by the University of Zurich in 2023. This has shown that Catholic priests and religious had committed more than 1,000 sexual abuse in Switzerland since 1950, the number of cases not registered is probably higher. From the presentation of the report, the Church announced measures against sexual abuse and their concealment.
On the question of the protection of authors and victims, the president of the episcopal conference declared to the Zurich daily: “I myself followed an apprenticeship. “This process began when the Friborg began to speak with people who are abuse and listen to them, said Mgr Morerod, adding:” In the Church, many have not had this experience until today – as a result, the learning process is also lacking. »»