A Centre for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons was opened within the Catholic Missionary Institute of Abidjan, ICMA, in Côte d’Ivoire on 23 March 2019. This initiative responds to Pope Francis’ call to provide more protection for children against sexual abuse.
Our confrere, Stéphane Joulain, gave several sessions on the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Persons to ICMA students.
Read the article – in French – of Marcel Ariston BLE, of the French-Africa service of Vatican-News. Or read below a quickly-made translation into English.
Read also – in French – from the French daily LaCroix Africa.
The building that will house the Centre for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons is part of the Catholic Missionary Institute of Abidjan, ICMA, in which many seminarians and priests from various religious congregations are trained. The blessing and inauguration of the building took place on Saturday, March 23, 2019, after the Eucharist presided over by Father Luc Kola, Chairman of the ICMA Board of Directors.
Listening to today’s cries
Father Pierre Claver Yessoh, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Abidjan, who represented, on this occasion, the Archbishop of Abidjan – Cardinal Jean Pierre Kutwa – , declared in particular: “This centre comes at the right time for all that we live in our Church. To have a centre of this magnitude in the Archdiocese of Abidjan is an opportunity for all God’s people.
The direction of the said centre is entrusted to Sister Solange Sia of the Congregation of Our Lady of Calvary, a doctor in spiritual theology. She says she welcomes this mission in the readiness to listen to Christ who asks us to be “listening to the cries of today in order to be able to give a response based on the Gospel”. According to Sister Sia, the centre will deal, among other things, with studying the risk factors of the commission of abuse against minors, but also with the care in case of abuse. Other modules, she assures, will mainly concern the accompaniment of people but also the question of prevention in order to avoid children being exposed to delicate situations.
Training actors for a new world
For Father Hermann of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, a student in his third year of theology at the Catholic Missionary Institute of Abidjan: “By setting up this centre for the protection of minors and vulnerable people, the formation house enters into the vision of the Church which is to train actors for a new world who could respond to current challenges”.
Brother Joseph Soulib of the Don Orione Congregation, also a student at the Catholic Missionary Institute in Abidjan, believes that this centre will “make it possible to understand what is called abuse of minors. Then, as a pastoral agent, know what methods can be used to prevent children from being abused. This centre will be a testimony that priests are not those who offend, but rather those who defend and protect children.”