Sins of the fathers: the Vatican and child abuse

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. China's businesses are starting to feel the bite of the country's trade war with America. As bilateral trade talks continue today in Washington, we visit the world's largest building in the city of Chengdu. Inside, there's a giant wave pool, 2 malls, 30,000 workers, free cats, and a glimpse of the state of China's economy. A few decades ago, a couple of hundred people on one tiny island were the only native speakers of Hawaiian. Now there are thousands. We look at an effort to resurrect the language and the benefits that it has brought. But first— Today at the Vatican, a 4-day conference will begin addressing the issue of child abuse by the clergy. Church leaders from around the world will be in attendance.

What's important about this summit is finally the acknowledgment that this is a global problem and it lives inside this global system, and the people running that system are— many of them, most of them, are going to be over here.

Peter Isely is a founding member of the activist group Ending Clergy Abuse.

They have to deliver. They have to deliver for survivors.

The conference will mark an important turning point for Pope Francis, who's been criticized for not dealing with the growing scandal.

The conference, which involves bishops from all over the world and other leading figures in the Roman Catholic Church, was called some months back following allegations that were leveled at Pope France's.

John Hooper, our Vatican correspondent, joins me on the line from Rome.

Part of those allegations had to do with his own record with regard to clerical sex abuse, and as a kind of token of the seriousness with which the Vatican said it was taking the whole issue of clerical sex abuse, this conference was called, the idea being to really get a grip on the issue.

And what does the Pope, or the Church more generally, hope to achieve at this meeting?

Well, that's not entirely clear. Some time ago, last month, Pope Francis said that he wanted to deflate expectations surrounding the conference, which I think is going to be very hard to do after the buildup that it was given, not least by the Vatican. What we know of the program suggests that it is largely educational. In other words, that the bishops from different parts of the world are going to be told how serious this issue is, that they're not to take it lightly, and they're going to discuss how exactly they should deal with allegations in the future. Whether rules come out of the conference, we don't know yet, but certainly that has been the hope of Pope Francis.

And so in that sense, you believe this to be a genuine attempt to address these problems rather than merely being seen to try to address these problems?

I think it's very difficult to say at the moment. We're going to have to wait for the results because I think those of us who followed the Vatican over a period of years have again and again seen that there have been sincere or apparently sincere attempts to deal with the problem. But then somehow the issue has got sidelined or the measures taken to deal with it have been watered down. And that has happened certainly since Pope Francis took over. A very likable man in many ways, but somebody who seems to have had great difficulty grasping the seriousness of this issue.

It's widely said that he's just coming to this issue quite late in the game, long after it became something quite serious. Do you know why that is and what might have changed in his mind about it?

I think that there are two possibilities. One is that he finds that he has to be seen to be giving a fair chance to the people on the receiving end of the allegations, that there may be cases in which false allegations are leveled at priests or bishops. I think that that is the more benign interpretation. The more malevolent one is that his own record is open to question. He ordered an investigation when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, which led to the clearing of the name of a well-known priest in Argentina. And subsequently, that priest was convicted by the Supreme Court and given a hefty prison sentence. Recently, just last year, he leapt to the defense of a Chilean bishop, and again, the feeling was left that he had instinctively taken the side of his fellow prelates rather than taking seriously the accusations that had been leveled against them by victims.

So with those examples in mind then, John, is the idea in terms of rules that may be codified here that essentially the church passes on to authorities these allegations as they arise to essentially kind of hand it over to authorities early on?

Yes, and I think that if they are going to tackle that issue, then they are going to have to look very hard also at canon law, because, um, as things stand, bishops are only required to pass these allegations on to the civil authorities where that is obligatory. And for example, in Italy, it is not obligatory. So I think that the church really has to look very hard at its own rulebook if it is going to tackle this issue.

Right, and some of those victims will be present at the meeting as well. Is there any sort of redress for them, or are they there just to kind of give their accounts of their experiences?

The idea is that they are going to be able to give the bishops present a real idea of the pain and suffering that sex abuse can cause, because I think that there has been an attitude, not just in the Catholic Church, but in many churches, that interfering with choirboys is a minor issue and doesn't have any particularly serious consequences in the long term. I think that that was traditionally the attitude. And what those who have pursued this issue within the church have tried to bring home is this is something not to be taken lightly. This is something that causes long-lasting lasting, if not permanent, damage to the victims, and people have really got to grasp that seriousness before the Church can move forward.

John, what do you think is the best possible outcome from this meeting then? What the Church should decide to do or declare it's going to do in order to regain everyone's trust?

I think that it would have to come out to say we're going to look very, very hard at our internal rulebook and make sure that We have total cooperation in the future where it is possible with the local civil authorities. And I think that they would also need to set up an independent review body to which complaints about the bishops who are alleged to have covered up in these cases can be referred. Then I think that they would be on the road to establishing the trust and gaining the confidence of their critics.

John, thank you for your time.

Not at all. My pleasure.

When you see it from afar, it really just looks like an airport terminal. But as you get closer, you realize it's just absolutely massive in every dimension.

Simon Rabinovich is our Asia economics editor. He's been visiting the Global Center, a shopping and office complex that is also the world's largest building.

It's big enough to roughly fit 3 Pentagons in it, and it's in the middle of southwestern China, about 1,000 km inland, in the city of Chengdu. There's about 50 different doors by which you can enter it. Uh, once you get inside, there's some 200 different elevators. At the center of it, there's a, a huge water park with a big wave pool. There's river rafting and slides and artificial beach. Two giant shopping malls, you know, on and on it goes. You then have all of the office space in the upper floors, and it's big enough to accommodate upwards of 30,000 workers.

Over the past 30 years, China has gone from being a marginal economy to being a global powerhouse. Recently though, its incredible growth has stalled. The attention focused on trade talks with America, which are continuing this week, underlines the country's vulnerability. So what can the world's largest building reveal about the world's second largest economy?

So you can sort of say that the center is both a result of China's growth and also in a way a cause of it. The city government expropriated the land from the 5,000 or so farmers that were living on it and sold it for about $60 million in 2008 to, uh, Deng Hong, a local real estate tycoon. And the idea from the city was that he was going to build a huge art centre and a big landscaped park. It was not supposed to be a mega mall. Deng bought it around the time that China was kicking off a really big frenzy of investment. It was after the global financial crisis had struck and the government was looking to do whatever it could to prop up growth. So it turned a blind eye to these sorts of big investment projects. The building really became a poster child for, you know, what a lot of people would say are the worst excesses of the Chinese economy, for waste and for debt and for corruption. And so I thought, given how inauspicious the beginning was for the Global Center, it would be good to head back and to see what's become of it, you know, more than 5 years after its opening.

And so what's it like now?

[SPEAKING CHINESE] I went there for the first time in August, and it reminded me a bit of pictures that I'd seen of Coney Island in the 1950s. There was families out and about. You had young couples in the waves. There was a real fairground atmosphere to the entire thing. And when you speak to some of the people that are there, you realize that, you know, these are representatives representatives of what you'll often hear about as the rising middle class in China. One of the people that I spoke to was an advertising salesman from Chengdu. His name was Mr. Zhang Meng. [SPEAKING CHINESE] He was at the side of the pool with his son, and for them, going to the Global Center had become one of the things that they loved to do at the weekend or during holidays. They had bought annual passes. When I caught up with him, he was sitting at the side of the wave pool with his son. They were finishing up dessert, and it just felt like your classic wholesome beachside family scene, albeit under a massive glass roof in the world's biggest building. One of the points about the Chinese in China's economy that critics will say is that there doesn't seem to be enough consumption. But when you visit a place like the Global Center, you realize this is not a nation of repressed consumers. I think the concern is not so much whether China is spending enough, but whether this kind of rise of consumption is something that's actually sustainable. And at least judging from the Global Center, it does look like it's something that is sustainable.

Well, I mean, that's the consumers consuming end of it, but you mentioned also that the Global Center has something like 30,000 people in its offices. What are those businesses?

I mean, this is one of the things that drew me to the Global Center was just that when you begin to look at the offices, you realize that you have an incredible cross-section of the Chinese business world. I mean, the first thing is just to note that the ferment of the private sector— there are just tons and tons of startups in the economy generally, and specifically in the Global Center. A lot of their business models are that are more or less certain to fail. One of the companies that I met with was giving away cats to consumers as a loss leader, and the idea was then to sell them cat food and pet toys online.

So did you get a cat?

I did not get a cat, Jason. I'm not really a cat person, and I've got one 2-year-old at home with a second on the way, so that's more than enough on my hands these days.

Okay, so beyond free cats, what else is there?

One of the companies that I met with was a shipping and logistics company that's been around for a few years and has grown quite a successful business. The manager of it that I spoke with, Li Jing, was saying that it's a company that's being caught up in the trade war. So she's seen exports slowing. But that's just one of the many businesses at the Global Center. And one of the striking things for me going back there several times was the turnover rate. This segment of the private sector in China, you can say, is a sort of more cutthroat capitalism than what you have in the West, simply because the Chinese market is so immature. By the same token, though, you can also see another group of companies in the Global Center which reflect a very different side of the Chinese economy where you see the presence of the state, the presence of the Communist Party really controlling some of what they are able to do. So depending on what office you'd go into in the Global Center, you'd come away with a very different impression of what the Chinese economy actually is.

So you wanted to kind of go back and see how the Global Center had come along in a few years after its inauspicious start. What do you think you will find when you go back in 5 years again?

I think the important thing about the Global Center is not the building in and of itself, but what it says about the Chinese economy. So there's, I guess, 3 things I'd be looking at. Number 1, can consumption hold up? It looks like the middle class is only getting bigger and only spending more money. If that's the case, you will be able to see that at the Global Center. Number 2, What happens to the building itself? Although you've got a lot of shoppers there, the fact is the building is huge. It's a really inefficient asset. So can China's economy get to be more efficient? And I guess the third question is, you know, is the Global Center the end of this kind of mega project for China? China has been trying to tamp down corruption. They've been trying to rein in debt growth. Growth, you know, if they're actually successful in doing that, you wouldn't have the preconditions for these kinds of massive buildings to get built in the first place. So I guess the key question really for 5 years' time is, will the Global Center still be the biggest building in China, in which case we could say China's done pretty well to control things, or will it have been eclipsed?

Simon, thanks for your time.

Thank you.

In 1972, Samuel Elbert, a linguist, collected a recording of spoken Hawaiian. The language was dying out. Only a couple of hundred people were still native speakers. [HAWAIIAN SPEECH] But now, more than 3,000 1,000 students are taught in Hawaiian.

[HAWAIIAN SPEECH] I just got interested in people who feel so strongly about dying languages that they're trying to bring them back to life.

Emma Duncan is The Economist's social policy editor. She was looking into the languages used in teaching when she learned about an initiative to resurrect one.

And the effort in Hawaii had been remarkably successful and surprisingly little written about.

So Emma, what happened to the native Hawaiian language?

Well, you know, lots of languages are dying around the world. Mostly they die because people move to cities, little isolated groups shrink. But in Hawaiian, what happened was that there was a coup against the monarchy in the 19th century, essentially by American business interests. And after that, teaching Hawaiian was made illegal. Schools all became English medium. And the language gradually died out.

Why is there this effort to resuscitate it then?

Well, it started quite a while ago, at least interest in Hawaiian was kind of sparked during the civil rights era. Bunch of students got interested in the language and although not native Hawaiian speakers themselves, they over time decided to raise their children speaking Hawaiian. What happened was a Māori guy came to visit and said, well, actually what we've done in New Zealand is we created created these language nests, which are little groups of kind of babies, in effect, with old people who still speak the language to speak to them. So a bunch of Hawaiians created ones called the Punana Leo.

And so how hard was it to set up those schools?

Well, it was a bit of a challenge. I mean, it was regarded as a kind of weird thing to do, and people said, You're nuts. You know, these kids need to learn English in order to achieve academically and do well in the labor force. And actually, those worries have not proved to be founded. Academically, kids at the Hawaiian medium schools seem to do slightly better than others. 87% of the kids at the main Hawaiian medium school go on to college compared to a state average of 55%. The other challenge was is that they had to get the law changed so that you could legally educate people in Hawaiian. I mean, what they were doing initially was kind of illegal.

And how are the schools doing today?

Now, 12 preschools, and it's now moved into secondary schooling, and there's now probably a few thousand native Hawaiian speakers.

What do the kids make of it?

Well, I talked to one of them. I mean, I think evidence of what she thinks of it is that she says she's definitely raising her children to speak Hawaiian. She realizes that it was an discomfort for her parents, but she's glad of it.

But I mean, this is a sort of resurrection of the language only, or is this also kind of a movement to resurrect some Hawaiian culture?

The language movement is kind of part of a bigger cultural thing. It's trying to recreate some of the stuff that was destroyed in the 19th century. So one of the professors, Larry Kimura, he had a really nice phrase about some of the Hawaiian literature. He was talking about the creation myths written by Kalakaua, Hawaii's last king, and he said, talking about the British relationship to the monarchy, he said, you know, you folks have heirlooms, we don't. These are our crown jewels.

How do I say thank you in Hawaiian? Emma, thank you very much.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. You can subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/radiooffer. 12 issues for $12 or £12. See you back here tomorrow. Mom, can you tell me a story?

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