The Ministry of Children and Families in Norway is considering to change the strict duty of confidentiality that rests on priests and church leaders.
“We are now assessing the current regulations and whether this can be considered sufficient to take care of the protection needs of children and young people”, the Ministry wrote to the Norwegian Christian daily Dagen.
Earlier, the Norwegian newspaper wrote that several Christian organisations had taken a joint initiative to assess whether the duty of confidentiality for priests and pastors is too strict.
Currently, church leaders are not obligated to report to the police and child protection in cases of abuse. Schools and kindergartens, for example, do have such an obligation. The Ministry, therefore, is now considering whether clergy should also fall under this legislation.
Protection
The Pentecostal movement and Norway's Christian Council, among others, have advocated for strengthening the legal protection of children and young people in religious communities. Rebekka Svardal Lund, a pastor in Trondheim, told Dagen that her congregation had decided to break today's duty of confidentiality, when necessary, about serious neglect of children and young people. “Children and young people should be even safer in church than at school. I'm afraid we have many children and young people who should have had help from the aid system.”
The Ministry is currently “assessing the regulations”. “We are still in an initial phase, but are in contact with, among other things, the organisations that have raised the issue.”
