It is a hopeful morning for Catholics, and for survivors of church sexual abuse.

Yesterday, Pope Francis named eight members to a commission to advise him on the sex abuse crisis.

Half of the eight are women — a first.

Five are laypeople — another first.

Also for the first time, a commission to deal with priestly abuse actually includes a true expert — an abuse survivor, Marie Collins of Ireland. She has detailed her molestation by a priest when she was a 13-year-old hospital patient in the 1960s and has since become an outspoken crusader for church accountability.

This all comes amid increasing fears that the pope, despite high expectations, would grossly underestimate the damage done by the crisis and the need for significant reform. Earlier this month, in an interview with an Italian newspaper, he stunned and disheartened abuse survivors by claiming the church itself as a victim in the scandal. He said it had been unfairly singled out for criticism. He even portrayed the church as transparent and accountable when reformers have been clamoring for both, with little success, for years.

The commission also includes Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who had announced its formation in December, although no members were named until yesterday. The commission was denounced then as toothless window dressing by survivors suspicious of its timing: The Vatican had just stonewalled a United Nations panel investigating the crisis. Then last month, the U.N. blasted the Vatican’s stonewalling. Francis was blasted himself for seeming not to grasp the depth of the abuse problem. And here we are.

“Guardedly hopeful,” was the reaction of Phil Saviano yesterday to this new group — particularly the inclusion of Collins. Saviano founded the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). This afternoon, he moderates a Boston fundraiser for SNAP’s 25th anniversary and says many in his group are “ready to be hopeful too.”

“But will (the Vatican) listen to them?” asked Carmen Durso, a Boston attorney who has represented hundreds of victims. “Are these women just window dressing too?”

We will see. But they hardly sound like pushovers. Besides Collins, there’s the former prime minister of Poland, a renowned child abuse expert from France and a psychiatrist who is president of the British Medical Association.

Still unknown is whether the commission will discipline bishops who enabled abuse and face no punishment, like our former archbishop, Bernard Law. Bishop
Accountability.org, the website which comprehensively chronicles it all, just raised questions about Francis’ own response to abuse cases in Argentina, charging that he failed to take strong, decisive action against accused priests there and even supported a priest convicted of molestation as recently as 2009. Numerous critics have wondered too at Francis’ failure to meet with a single survivor — and he’s been pope for a year.

But in a church that moves and changes at a glacial pace, if at all, what we saw yesterday could actually signify real change pushed by a politically astute new pope. Four women and five laypeople are now in a position to wield power in a closed institution of male clergy. This is hopeful indeed.