IICSA Benedictine hearings day 2

Unfortunately, Day 2 did not achieve very much in terms of questioning and holding people to account.

The day's proceedings started at 10:30 with the counsel to the inquiry reading excerpts from several statements, those of Fr Luke Beckett (Ampleforth's canon lawyer), Rev Christopher Thomas (secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales), Fr Paul Smyth (president of the Congegation of Religious), Mr Christopher Pearson (lay chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission), Ms. Colette Limbrick (director of the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service). This took until they broke for lunch at 1pm.

It was mostly pretty dry stuff, details of how the Catholic church is organised - details of canon law, the organisation of its safeguarding bodies and so on.

There was something gruesomely inefficient about the way the inquiry went about its business. The panel and about 30 lawyers (most paid for by IICSA) spent a morning listening to one lawyer read excerpts from written statements they had all read already. There must be (and in fact is) a cheaper and more efficient way of declaring these statements to be in the public domain and taken into account by the panel. This was wasted time that should be being devoted to questioning witnesses. The inquiry had only 3 weeks of hearings in this round. The trial of a single child abuse offender often takes longer than that, and the trial of Abbot Laurence Soper took 10 weeks. This would become critical later in the hearings.

The  most important part of the read statements was a part of Colette Limbrick's statement describing the role of CSAS.

The primary role of CSAS is one of coordination, advice and support to the Catholic Church in England and Wales in respect of safeguarding children, young people and adults at risk.  The role and tasks in CSAS include, but are not limited to:

• providing advice to members of the church about safeguarding issues;
• providing advice to lay people about safeguarding issues;
• developing and supporting the delivery of safeguarding training within the church;
• ensuring that the national safeguarding policies and procedures are contemporary, relevant, comply with best practice and are published for implementation across the church in England and Wales.
• undertaking a role in quality assurance of safeguarding activity within dioceses and religious congregations;
• identifying and disseminating good safeguarding practice within the church;
• being the national safeguarding point of contact for national stakeholders, by example, other churches and secular organisations;
• being the registered body for the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)

As one might surmise from its name, the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service in fact can only advise. As far as being able to "ensure" anything, all it can do is ensure that its own policies are "published for implementation", which is a telling form of words. As we later found in evidence, CSAS (and its predecessor COPCA) lacks any power to ensure that its policies are actually implemented.

The afternoon was spent taking evidence from Abbot Richard Yeo, specifically in the organisation of the English Benedictine Congregation and his role until recently as Abbot President thereof. (He gave evidence again later in the hearings on his role and actions as Abbot of Downside).

Yeo described how each monastery or convent (there are 10 in England an Wales) is largely autonomous under its own Abbot. Formal and permanent transfers of monks between monasteries are rare, through for one monk to visit another monastery for a period is not that rare. The Abbot President has more or less no powers to direct an abbot to do something, he can only advise. The Abbot President's primary role is to carry out a Visitation of each house every four years to ensure that the monastery is still following the Rule of St Benedict as interpreted in modern times in each monastery's "customary" or constution. There are no central safeguarding records and the role of the Abbot President in safeguarding matters is very limited.

They spent the afternoon meandering round the Rule of St Benedict and the rules of the EBC without anything of any great note being uncovered.

And that was the end of Day 2. I was beginning to wonder whether the hearings would ever get down to anything important.