Priest’s son demands Vatican attention for clergy’s children

VATICAN CITY — The head organizer of the Vatican’s sex abuse summit has met with an Irish activist who is seeking to draw attention to another issue the Vatican has long sought to keep quiet: the plight of children of priests.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, for years the Vatican’s sex crimes investigator, met Tuesday with Vincent Doyle, the child of a priest. Through his advocacy and self-help group Coping International, Doyle has sought to compel Catholic leaders to acknowledge the issue of priests’ children and the psychological and emotional impact the church’s enforced secrecy has on them and their mothers.

In a statement, Scicluna said the issue needed to be addressed and the children of priests acknowledged.

This week the Vatican acknowledged publicly to The New York Times that it has internal guidelines on handling such cases.

Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti confirmed that the guidelines’ fundamental principle is looking out for the best interests of the child. As such, he said, the guidelines “ordinarily ask for the priest to present his request to be dispensed from the obligations of the clerical state, and as a lay person, assume his responsibilities as a father, dedicating himself exclusively to his child.”

Doyle is pressing for that default position to change, arguing that it often is not in the best interests of the child for his father to be fired.

Doyle also notes that these children are born under a wide range of circumstances, with some the result of sexual abuse by priests against girls and women.