Cardinal Napier - Apology is welcome

Yesterday’s apology from Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier in South Africa is welcome and appropriate.

Last week, he had suggested that paedophilia is an illness and not a crime, particularly if the perpetrator had been abused as a child.

This is an extremely sensitive issue and there is no room for ambiguity or half measures.

Cardinal Napier, in offering an unreserved apology for his “botched” interview, recognised that he may have hurt, albeit unintentionally, victims of clerical child sexual abuse.

It is reassuring too that he recognised that “child sexual abuse is a heinous crime… In that concern, I include the abused who has become an abuser,” thereby removing any licence his interview may have offered to some of those abused as a child.