Videos Created by National Office for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland

 

Every month for the nine months beginning on the 21st January 2021, the National Board will place a short video on an aspect of a Theology of Safeguarding on their website.

 

 

 

Nine videos have been commissioned from theologians, scripture scholars and ethicists who live and work in Ireland, Italy and the United States. In month 10, October 2021, the National Board will host its National Conference on the theme of Towards a Theology of Safeguarding at which the questions posed by the video contributors will be addressed.

 

January 2021

The first presentation by Fr Hans Zollner can be accessed below.  Fr Hans Zollner SJ is founding President of the Centre for Child Protection and Professor at the Institute of Psychology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and consultor to the Congregation for Clergy. He is honorary professor at Durham University, UK. Lectures and conferences have taken him to many countries on six continents

 

February 2021

The second presentation is from Sr. Nuala Kenny who is a Sister  of Charity of Halifax.  

Sr. Nuala was the paediatrician member of the St John’s, Newfoundland Archdiocesan Committee on Child Sexual Abuse which produced a “landmark report’ in 1992. This committee identified both individual and systemic/cultural factors at work in the crisis.  In 1990-1992, she was appointed to the Canadian Conference of Bishops Ad Hoc Committee on Clergy Sexual Abuse. This Committee produced From Pain to Hope, the first set of national guidelines on this topic.

Following this involvement, Sr Nuala returned to her academic and clinical career as paediatrician and medical ethicist and has travelled extensively giving reflections to clergy and laity from her books “Healing the Church: Diagnosing and Treating the Clergy Abuse Crisis”(Novalis, 2012) and Still Unhealed: Challenges for Conversion and Reform from the Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis (Novalis and Twenty Third Publications, 2019. Her newest book focuses on pathology needing personal and ecclesial conversion in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Titled Prophetic Possibilities for the Post Pandemic Church it is due from Novalis in January, 2021.

March 2021

Dr. Ethna Regan CHF is Associate Professor in Theology and Ethics in Dublin City University.  A Holy Faith Sister, she taught for over a decade at the University of the West Indies, and worked with Credo Foundation for Justice in Port of Spain with socially displaced children, and in the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty in the Caribbean. She also worked for five years in Samoa. Her PhD from the University of Cambridge was on theology and human rights, and she has also published in the areas of Catholic social thought, theological anthropology, and ecclesial responses to child abuse.

April 2021

Fr Paddy Boyle

A priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin, Administrator St. Benedict’s Grange Park and St. Monica’s Edenmore. Chaplain to the Deaf Community in Dublin. 2004/2005 trained with VDA as child Safeguarding Trainer. Training and Development Co-ordinator with the Dublin Diocese 2005 – 2016. Currently Tutor with the National Office for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland. Part-time lecturer in Biblical Theology in All Hallows College, Dublin 1998 – 2014.

The video presentation will be available on the 15th April.

You can find out more about the speakers, the conference and theology of safeguarding by following this link https://www.safeguarding.ie/national-conference-2021 .

For those interested in reading more about the work of the National Board for Safeguarding you can access their December Newsletter by Clicking Here