Sir Frank Peters :
Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church and spiritual leader to approximately 1.2 billion Christians worldwide, made a grave error last Wednesday when addressing around 7,000 people gathered in the Pope Paul VI Hall at The Vatican in Rome. It was a sad day for children worldwide.
He said it is fine for parents to smack their children as punishment for bad behaviour. (No, it isn’t)
While recalling a conversation he had had with a father who told him that on occasions he hits his children if they have been naughty, His Holiness, smiling and miming the action of slapping a child on the bottom, said: “One time, I heard a father say, ‘At times I have to hit my children a bit, but never in the face so as not to humiliate them.’
“That’s great. He had a sense of dignity. He should punish, do the right thing, and then move on.”
Campaign groups worldwide for child protection, including me, were horrified, outraged, and quick to condemn his remarks that were interpreted as an endorsement of corporal punishment.
I can fully understand being caught up in the moment and wanting to endear himself more to the audience by miming the action of slapping a child on the bottom just as any great raconteur might on such an occasion for greater effect, but his failing to add ‘I’m only joking’ (if he were) will have serious implications for children worldwide, especially within the Catholic church school system, where corporal punishment problems are deep-rooted and profuse.
His offhand remarks could open wide the floodgates of corporal punishment in Catholic schools (especially) throughout the world, whether federal laws to the contrary exist or not. ‘If the Pope said corporal punishment is okay, then it must be okay’ is likely to be catch phrase and all the permission the deranged perpetrators (teachers and ignorant parents) need to execute heinous cruelty upon children.
“It is disappointing that anyone with that sort of influence would make such a comment,” said Peter Newell, the co-ordinator of the Global Alliance to End Corporal Punishment of Children.
Peter Saunders, the founder of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, told The Telegraph (London): “I think that is a very misguided thing to have said and I’m surprised he said it, although he does come up with some howlers sometimes.” The late American President and staunch Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy once said: “an error only becomes a mistake if it is not corrected”.
His Holiness Pope Francis has so far only made a verbal typographical-type error. I hope it was merely a slip of the tongue. I appeal to him, however, to correct this before it becomes a mistake and I ask this be done for the greater benefit of children worldwide irrespective of race, creed and nationality.
I implore the Pope to issue a statement immediately retracting his unacceptable off-the-cuff remarks and to also make mention of this gaffe in his historic speech when he becomes the first Pope to address a joint session of Congress in Washington on Sept 24 and the entire world will be his audience.
Irrespective of what the Pope said, facetious or otherwise, the facts remain unchanged. Corporal punishment is totally wrong and has no place in modern society. It serves no useful purpose whatsoever, but causes untold damage by creating damaged children, broken adults and an appalling society that nobody wants. Enough is enough!
Eminent Bangladeshi Supreme Court Justices, Md. Imman Ali and Md. Sheikh Hassan Arif describes corporal punishment as: “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and a clear violation of a child’s fundamental right to life, liberty and freedom”. Truth is inflexible.
English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) wrote, “To err is human; to forgive, divine”. No doubt everyone will forgive His Holiness when his error is corrected.
(The writer is a former newspaper and magazine publisher and editor, an award-winning writer, humanitarian, and a human rights activist who campaigned for five years to abolish corporal punishment in Bangladesh.)
