WASHINGTON (DC)
LifeSite
WASHINGTON, August 23, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Catholic News Service has announced that Rome is set to start its long-awaited "apostolic visitation," or systematic investigation and evaluation of the formation offered to prospective priests in seminaries. With many bishops studiously ignoring what has become the ecclesiastical equivalent of the elephant in the drawing room, Rome may be planning to force the issue at last.
The last Vatican-led visitation was seven years in duration beginning in 1981. The report given to Pope John Paul II, according to some observers, amounted to a whitewash in which the theological and moral dissent being taught was deliberately ignored or hidden.
This time, after years of mounting sexual abuse scandals in which certain bishops were implicated in a massive cover-up, and after some dioceses have declared bankruptcy and closed parishes to pay off settlements, Catholics may be hopeful that the real issues will at last be addressed. The Vatican has named Edwin F. O'Brien Archbishop for the Military Services as the coordinator for the project.