Pope Francis to Meet Victims of Sexual Abuse

By Elisabetta Povoledo
New York Times
May 27, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/world/europe/pope-to-meet-sex-abuse-victims.html?_r=1

Pope Francis says he plans to meet soon with abuse victims to underscore the Vatican’s determination to move forward with “zero tolerance” toward clergy members accused of abusing minors.

As he returned from the Holy Land on Monday night, the pope spent about 40 minutes addressing questions from reporters aboard his plane, on topics including papal retirement and the celibacy of priests. He also said the Vatican was investigating three bishops suspected of involvement in cases of sexual abuse and had found one guilty.

“We are now considering the penalty to be imposed,” the pope said. “There are no privileges.”

He did not offer any more details about the bishops, and the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said on Tuesday that he could not elaborate on the cases, including whether the bishops were accused of sexual abuse or of covering it up.

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The pope said he would celebrate Mass with eight abuse victims in the small church inside the Vatican guesthouse where he lives. The victims, from various countries including Britain and Germany, will be accompanied by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston and one of the eight members of a Vatican commission created last year to advise the pope on policy toward sexual abuse. The date of the meeting has not been set, Father Lombardi said.

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston will travel to the Vatican with eight abuse victims.

It will be the first time the pope meets personally with victims of clergy abuse, a gesture his predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II made several times. “The abuse of minors is a very ugly” and “serious” crime that is comparable to sacrilege, Pope Francis said.

But Joelle Casteix, a regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said in a statement that the pope’s personal overture to victims would change nothing and would not shield vulnerable children from risk.

“No child rape will be prevented, no abuse cover-up will be prevented and no predator priest will be exposed by anything the pope said today or will do next month,” Ms. Casteix said. “His upcoming and self-serving meeting with victims is more of what we’ve seen for decades: more gestures, promises, symbolism and public relations.”

BishopAccountability.org, a private Boston-based group that documents cases of sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic Church, said the meeting would be a “welcome and overdue change” as long as the pope, who it said “refused to meet with victims of clergy abuse” when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, would “open himself to be changed deeply” by the encounter.

On Friday, the United Nations Committee Against Torture called on the Vatican to “take effective measures” to better monitor the behavior of the clergy and to prevent abuse. The committee said it was concerned about reports that some church officials continued to resist the principle of mandatory reporting to civil authorities, despite guidelines from the Vatican.

On the subject of papal retirement, Pope Francis said his immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict, had “opened a door, the door of pope emeriti; only God knows if there will be others.”

Responding to a question about the issue of holy communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, which will be discussed in a Synod on the Family in October, the pope said, “I do not like the fact that many people, even within the church, have said that it will be the Synod about remarried divorces, as if it could simply be reduced to a case study: Can they receive communion or not?”

“The issue is much broader,” he continued, and involves various aspects of the family, which is in crisis.

The pope also spoke of priestly celibacy, suggesting that he was open to discussion of the issue. Celibacy “is a rule of life that I greatly appreciate, as I believe it is a gift for the church,” he said. “But since it is not a dogma, the door is always open.” He added, however, that there were more pressing concerns.

For years, organizations of priests in Austria, Ireland and the United States have called for the church to re-examine the celibacy requirement, and some bishops elsewhere in Europe and in Africa have also gone on record saying the church should consider the step. Many organizations of liberal Catholic laypeople around the world also advocate abandoning the celibacy rule, and polls in the United States show that a majority of Roman Catholics favor allowing priests to marry.

The shortage of priests in the United States and Europe has brought the issue to the fore. Studies have shown that the celibacy requirement is a major deterrent to young men considering the priesthood.

Pope Benedict XVI also contributed to the growing debate on the issue when he made it easier for priests from the Anglican Communion to serve in the Roman Catholic Church. Many Anglican priests are married and have children, prompting some to question why Catholic priests are still barred from marrying.

Earlier this month, the pope received a letter signed by 26 women who described themselves as being in constrained and secretive relationships with priests or monks, asking the pope to “break down the wall of silence and indifference that we are faced with every day.”

“We humbly place our suffering at your feet in the hope that something may change, not just for us, but for the good of the entire church,” the women wrote in the letter, published by The Vatican Insider. “The only other alternatives are either for the priest to abandon the priesthood or for the relationship to carry on in secret,” they wrote.