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| Pope's Response to Sex Abuse Imperils Legacy
By Nicole Winfield
Associated Press
December 27, 2018
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Pope-s-response-to-sex-abuse-imperils-legacy-13494471.php
It has been a wretched year for Pope Francis, whose blind spot on clergy sex abuse conspired with events beyond his control to threaten his legacy and throw the Catholic hierarchy into a credibility crisis not seen in modern times.
The latest development a high-profile verdict in a faraway country cements the impression that Francis simply didn't "get it" when he first became pope in 2013 and began leading the church.
Early missteps included associating with compromised cardinals and bishops and downplaying or dismissing rumors of abuse and cover-up. Francis finally came around in 2018, when he publicly admitted he was wrong about a case in Chile, made amends, and laid the groundwork for the future by calling an abuse prevention summit next year.
But damage to his moral authority on the issue has been done. Before his eyes were opened, Francis showed that he was a product of the very clerical culture he so often denounces, ever ready to take the word of the clerical class over victims.
The year started off well enough: Francis dedicated his annual Jan. 1 peace message to the plight of migrants and refugees. Soon thereafter, he baptized 34 cooing babies in the Sistine Chapel and urged their mothers to nurse.
Then came Chile.
Francis' January visit was dominated by the clergy abuse scandal there, and featured unprecedented protests against a papal visit: Churches were firebombed and riot police used water cannons to quell demonstrations.
Chilean opposition to Francis had actually begun three years prior, when the Argentine-born pope appointed Juan Barros as bishop of the southern diocese of Osorno. Francis had dismissed allegations that Barros ignored and covered up abuse by Chile's most prominent predator priest.
"The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I'll speak," Francis said on his final day in Chile. "There is not one shed of proof against him. It's all slander. Is that clear?"
Francis defended Barros because one of his friends and advisers, Chilean Cardinal Javier Errazuriz, defended Barros. Francis in 2013 had named Errazuriz to his inner circle, a formal parallel Cabinet of nine cardinals who meet every three months at the Vatican.
Chilean victims, though, had long charged that Errazuriz had been deaf to their claims while he was archbishop of Santiago, giving cover to abusers and their enablers. Francis disregarded the victims' concerns and appointed Errazuriz to the high-profile Cabinet post.
In the wake of his disastrous trip to Chile, Francis slowly came around to the victims' view. He ordered an in-depth investigation into the Chilean church, admitted to "grave errors in judgment" and personally apologized to the victims he had discredited. He accused the Chilean leadership of creating a "culture of cover-up" and secured the resignations of every active bishop there, Barros included. He vowed that the Catholic Church would "never again" hide abuse, and earlier this month the Vatican announced Francis had fired Errazuriz from the Cabinet.
Also removed was Cardinal George Pell, who left his post as the Vatican's economy minister in June 2017 to stand trial for historical sex abuse offenses in his native Australia. Like Errazuriz, Pell had been the target of abuse victims' ire for years, well before Francis brought him to the Vatican, given his prominent role in Australia and the church's horrific record with abuse there.
Both men deny wrongdoing. But their continued presence on the Council of Nine, as the Cabinet is called, became a source of scandal for the pope.
They are not the only cardinals on the hot seat: The current archbishop of Santiago is under investigation in a broad criminal inquiry into sex abuse cover-up. Prosecutors in a dozen U.S. states are investigating church files. A cover-up trial in France has two cardinals as defendants.
Despite such problems, with the Chile scandal largely atoned for and decisions made to purge his inner circle of compromised members, Francis appeared by summer to be well on his way to steering himself out of the 2018 sex abuse crisis.
Then Round 2 hit.
In July, Francis removed U.S. Archbishop Theodore McCarrick as a cardinal after church investigators said an allegation that he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. Subsequently, several former seminarians and priests reported that they too had been abused or harassed by McCarrick as adults.
A month later, a grand jury report in Pennsylvania revealed seven decades of abuse and cover-up in six dioceses, with allegations that more than 1,000 children had been molested by about 300 priests. Most of the priests were dead, and the crimes far pre-dated Francis' papacy. But the combined scandal created a crisis in confidence in the U.S. and Vatican hierarchy. It was apparently common knowledge in the U.S. and Vatican leadership that "Uncle Ted," as McCarrick was known, slept with seminarians, and yet he still he rose undisturbed up the church ranks.
Francis removed McCarrick and approved a canonical trial against him. But his get-tough victory lap was cut short when a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S. accused the pope himself of participating in the McCarrick cover-up.
In an 11-page denunciation in August, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano claimed that Vatican officials from the top on down over the course of three pontificates had known about McCarrick's penchant for seminarians, and turned a blind eye.
Francis never responded to Vigano's laundry list of claims. Instead, Francis took to blaming the devil "the Great Accuser" for sowing division and discord in the church.
And the Vatican didn't help Francis' standing any when, without providing a plausible reason, it blocked U.S. bishops from adopting accountability measures to try to restore trust with their flocks.
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