VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican has dodged a series of questions posed by a U.N. committee about clerical sexual abuse by noting that the Holy See doesn't control the actions of every Catholic in the world, much less every Catholic priest, parish or school.
The Vatican on Tuesday submitted its responses to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child about its implementation on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The committee raised a series of questions about the Holy See's latest progress report, which was due in 1997 but was finally submitted last year after a new explosion of child sex abuse cases.
The Holy See dodged most questions by asserting that the treaty is territorial in nature, and only must be implemented in the tiny Vatican City state.
