The Vatican will hold an international conference on clerical sex abuse, in Rome next February, reports the Catholic News Agency. Psychologists, theologians and child-abuse specialists are expected to participate in the symposium, providing expertise to bishops, whom the Vatican has given a deadline of next May to come up with guidelines on how to handle accusations of abuse, said a report from the New York Times and AP in the Sydney Morning Herald.

“We want to share the best practices” in combatting the issue, Fr Hans Zollner SJ, Head of the Preparatory Committee of the Symposium, told the Catholic News Agency.
“So we’ve invited speakers who are experts in the field of working with victims and also those who are experts in understanding the psychology of perpetrators.”

The “Towards Healing and Renewal Symposium” will take place February 6-9, 2012, at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome. It will invite over 200 representatives from bishops’ conferences and major religious orders around the world.

It is hoped the gathering in Rome will assist them in drawing up new guidelines to deal with the issue of clerical abuse a requirement recently imposed by the Vatican upon church bodies who don’t yet have such charters.

According to the report in the Herald, plans also call for information to be posted on an internet learning centre and in a database that will involve co-operation with medical schools and universities, and will be accessible, in part, to the public.

”The church is taking an important step in the formation of the clergy,” Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s internal prosecutor in charge of handling sexual abuse cases, said at the weekend.

And the multilingual internet database will amass information ”that will continue through time”, and reach a wide audience, he said.