Father Grassi’s Sex Abuse Case: Cardinal Bergoglio - “reckless and Irresponsible” – Expert

Voice of Russia
March 23, 2013

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_03_22/Father-Grassi-s-sex-abuse-case-Cardinal-Bergoglio-reckless-and-irresponsible-expert/

The issue of underage sex abuse in the Catholic Church is one that the new Pope, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is expected to address and deal with. How he plans to do this is something many want to know. Despite being hailed as a man who stands with the poor backing his own nation, Pope Francis, as he is now known, has had a controversial past with regards to pedophilia.

Critics are saying that even in the most famous cases that found Argentinean priests guilty and landed them in jail, Pope Francis did not do enough to ensure the protection and the elimination of this serious crimes, nor did he do enough to aid the victims after the fact, many say.

With us to discuss this is Anne Barrett Doyle of bishop-accountability.org

Thank you so much for joining me Anne. What does your organization do and how are you seeing it as it unfolds in Argentina? They’ve had some pretty serious articles about it in the Washington Post and in the New York Times that have addressed the fact that there are some things that have been left unset there?

My organization bishop-accountability.org tracks clergy sex abuse data and documents worldwide. We are the largest repository of documents that have been forced out of the Catholic Church for instance as a result of action by victims. And our concern here is simply, you know, we have not by any means thoroughly researched Pope Francis’s record in Argentina. But preliminary indications in just two priests’ cases that are recent suggest that he was very unsympathetic towards victims, and more seriously, did not take proper actions to protect children from credibly accused priests.

You said that your organization works worldwide. Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Latin America, what is that like? Is it kind of where we were in the 1950’es-1960’es?

We simply don’t have a good handle on the public record of the Catholic abuse crisis in Latin America yet. We are quickly fetching researchers to accumulate any information that is in the public domain, from court records to media accounts. But the crisis has not surfaced there to the same extent it has in the US or Europe, Australia or Canada. But we will see in the coming days what exactly exists in the public record about this crisis in Latin America and attempt to quantify how bad the problem is there.

And the story in the Washington Post, it does talk about Father Bergoglio and also talks about two of these cases that I think you were referring to. One was Father Julio Cesar Grassi. And apparently he was in jail and now he has been released on parole. And it sounded like he did not get a very large sentence at all, that it wasn’t taken very seriously.

Well, from the Washington Post it seems he was a friend of Cardinal Bergoglio and that after Father Grassi was convicted of sexually abusing children, and these kids had to actually testify about the abuse, the Catholic Church intervened to commission its own investigation which declared Father Grassi innocent. And this intervention was persuasive enough that it prevented the priest from serving the jail time that he had been sentenced to.

So, with your organization you find out the information and what do you do with it then?

We actually are simply librarians, we simply aggregate all the information that is in the public domain. We do provide this information to prosecutors and to legislators, and the proper bodies like the UN. But our primary job is simply to collect all the information on our website.

I know that you are asking the authorities in Argentina to release some of the documents.

What seems to have happened here is very serious. Cardinal Bergoglio seems to have basically put children in harm’s way by facilitating the freedom of Father Grassi. And first of all he has to undo the harm he has done. But also he has violated what is becoming recognized worldwide as a best practice of catholic bishops which is – to remove from the ministry any priest whose guilt has been established in child sexual abuse case.

It is absolutely shocking that Cardinal Bergoglio was so reckless and irresponsible. And we also urge him to put pressure on the current Buenos Aires Archbishop to release the records of all the credibly accused priests in Buenos Aires, to release a list of their names as it was done here in the United States.

Do you think that Pope Francis is part of the Western world per se and the media will be watching to see what he does with this, do you think that it might have some influence?

That’s an interesting question and I think it could go either way. I think he could feel even more above the law, so to speak, because he is now Pope and basically was not held accountable for his irresponsible behaviour as the leader of the Buenos Aires archdioceses. I think, just as we’ve seen in the United States, the power for holding church leaders accountable is going to have to come from secular authorities and from grassroots movements, and from victims.

I think it is very possible that Argentina, because it has a very high profile in terms of the Catholic abuse crisis worldwide, I think it’s entirely possible that the Argentinean society and even the hierarchy there could become very aggressive and proactive in reforming in a way that would get accused priests out the ministry and behind bars. And that would make them leaders in child protection in the church. I think that’s an absolutely plausible scenario.