As a Contracting State to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Vatican appeared before the Committee on the Rights of the Child during its 65th session in January 2014 to report on its progress in implementing the treaty.  The Committee’s  Concluding Observations and Recommendations, posted online on February 5, have drawn wide attention for its strongly worded criticisms.  See, for example, Laurie Goodstein, Nick Cumming-Bruce, and Jim Yardley, U.N. Panel Criticizes the Vatican Over Sexual Abuse, NY Times (Feb. 5, 2014), and Lizzie Davies and Henry McDonald, UN denounces Vatican over child abuse and demands immediate action, Guardian (5 Feb. 2014). Although the history of clerical sexual abuse garnered the biggest headlines, the CRC report also addressed issues regarding discrimination against non-marital children, the financial and identity rights of children born to Catholic priests, corporal punishment, and the forcible removal of babies from their mothers in Spain and the Magdalene laundries in Ireland.