Title: "Restoring Faith: Resolving the Roman Catholic Church's Sexual Scandals through Restorative Justice"

In collaboration with the Justice and Reconciliation Project

This comprises a series of papers on how Restorative Justice could be applied to help resolve the sexual scandals in the Catholic Church. It is hoped that, through the construction of concrete theoretical and practical frameworks, justice officers will be able to deal with these cases restoratively. The first paper has already been published[1]. Its intention was to build the theoretical framework of the larger project. This was achieved by placing the serious impact of the scandals in both social and legal contexts. In addition, the history of the cases against the Roman Catholic Church in Canada and the USA was analyzed. The conclusion of the paper recapitulated the Church’s need for RJ programs by showing how they can include five essential ingredients that assist the striving for justice, especially since both victims and the Church have been let down by the dominant retributive and utilitarian cultures of our times.

IARS would like to proceed with the second phase of this project. This will involve fieldwork. We would like to hear from anyone who is interested in this project as a potential partner, funder, researcher or other. Please email Dr. Theo Gavrielides for further details and a copy of the paper.