The Commission opened its new European safeguarding webinar series on 3 December with a session examining governance and independence, drawing close to 200 registered participants from 43 countries. Attendees included survivor advocates, Church leaders, canon lawyers, psychologists, educators, civil-society representatives and researchers. The session formed part of the European Safeguarding Toolkit, an initiative designed to strengthen collaboration and establish shared standards across the region. 

Participants expressed a strong need for practical tools, consistent training frameworks and clearer models of independence. Surveys conducted during the webinar showed that many viewed the developing European initiative as a network or community of practice, and working groups have begun forming around prevention, training, transparency, accountability and victim-centred approaches. 

Marie Derain de Vaucresson, President of the Instance nationale indépendante de reconnaissance et de réparation (INIRR), presented an extensive overview of the French experience. She traced the long emergence of awareness in France, beginning with early public testimonies in 2015 and continuing through the work of the CIASE, whose 2021 report documented an estimated 216,000 minors abused by clergy, with a total of 330,000 victims when including lay Church personnel. She outlined the CIASE’s main recommendations, including the creation of an independent body, the adoption of individualised approaches to financial reparation and the separation of investigative and pastoral responsibilities from ecclesial structures. 

Derain de Vaucresson described the foundations of INIRR’s independence: a clear mandate, autonomous organisation, transparent procedures, guaranteed resources and a public annual report. The INIRR operates separately from the French Bishops’ Conference, is located outside its premises and maintains independence from the national fund that finances reparations. She noted that independence is not only structural but relational, rooted in professionalism, a consistent method of accompaniment and precise procedural standards designed to ensure fairness for every person seeking recognition. 

Survivor testimony played a central role in her remarks. Participants heard reflections from victims who said the INIRR’s neutrality and transparency allowed them to speak freely without fear of minimisation. Derain de Vaucresson emphasised that the credibility of safeguarding systems rests on this independence and on clear communication of what victims can expect when entering the process. 

Mia De Schamphelaere presented developments in Belgium, recalling two defining moments in 2010 and 2023 that brought a hidden history of abuse to light and prompted major structural reforms. She described the creation of an independent Arbitration Centre, fully public parliamentary inquiries and the Church’s commitment to cooperate with state authorities in all non-prescribed cases. She outlined the work of Dignity, the independent foundation overseeing victim reception centres staffed by professionals from justice, health and education, all working under a shared protocol signed by dioceses and more than 300 religious congregations. Belgium’s model, she said, aims to avoid parallel systems, ensure equal treatment of victims and make all data publicly available through annual reporting. 

The German perspective was presented by Andreas Zimmer, who reflected on the establishment of the German Bishops’ Conference hotline in 2010. He noted that most callers sought two things: to be heard and believed, and to help ensure no one else would endure similar harm. He described how the hotline’s operation by counselling professionals—bound by confidentiality under German law and not subject to instructions from Church leadership—illustrated the close relationship between independence and responsibility. Survivors’ reactions, he said, revealed the complexity of speaking both to the Church as an institution and to the particular dioceses or bishops implicated in their histories. 

Zimmer stressed that the Church “has many faces”: survivors, perpetrators, those who enabled abuse, those who resisted it and those now working for safeguarding. Many survivors were practising Catholics at the time of the abuse, and some remain so today. Their trust, offered in moments of vulnerability, was violated by people they believed would guide and protect them. For those involved in prevention and intervention today, Zimmer said, the survivors’ mandate—to ensure that things are different now and in future—remains binding. 

He reflected on the spiritual and institutional challenge of acknowledging that abuse is part of the Church’s history, a realisation that often prompts defensiveness or comparisons with wider society. Yet, he added, the Gospel itself demands a different standard of conduct and accountability. He called for a practice of compassion that keeps the memory of unjust suffering present, noting that forgetting allows violence to re-emerge. 

Zimmer detailed the structures Germany has since built: diocesan survivor advisory boards, historical commissions including state-appointed officials, academics and survivors, and regulations ensuring multidisciplinary collaboration in prevention and intervention. He underlined that despite fifteen years of work, the process remains ongoing: “We are still learning and still making mistakes.” Ultimately, he said, credibility depends less on rules than on visible actions and encounters that demonstrate seriousness and sincerity. 

Archbishop Thibault Verny, President of the Commission, reflected on the French experience and the broader principles emerging across Europe. He highlighted that independence in safeguarding is essential for truth-telling and for the Church’s own conversion. Independence, he said, does not diminish episcopal responsibility but strengthens it by providing credible structures through which victims can be accompanied. He emphasised that while models cannot simply be transferred from one country to another, the shared intuition remains the same: independence serves truth, transparency and trust. 

The session closed with a shared recognition that safeguarding in Europe requires sustained collaboration, clear governance and structures that ensure independence while placing survivors at the centre. The next events in the series will continue developing the European Safeguarding Toolkit as a shared platform for expertise and accountability across the region.