Lima (Fides Service) – On 27 November 2003, at the head offices of the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference in Lima, a pact for collaboration was signed by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF. The agreement, stipulated according to the principles of the UN Charter of Children’s Rights and the Code of the Child and the Adolescent inscribed in Peruvian law, will develop projects for the defence and promotion of the rights of children and adolescents in Peru in the light of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church.
“With this agreement the local Church hopes to promote the work of pastoral workers in all the different dioceses to develop centres of protection for abandoned and abused children and adolescents Bishop Hugo Garaycoa of Tacna-Moquegua and President of the Bishops’ Conference told Fides. The Bishop thanked UNICEF for its help and he also praised the efforts of a Church net-work promoted by the Bishops Commission for Children’s Pastoral care to register and address cases of child abuse at the national level. (R.Z.) (Fides Service 29/11/2003; lines 14; words 184)