UNITED STATES
Washington Times
Michael Mickler
New York, June 24, 2013 — Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was elected 266th pope of the Catholic Church on March 13, 2013. As the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide, he has completed his first 100 days in office. Unlike American presidents, there’s no expectation of this period being a benchmark of his early success. Nor did Francis come into the pontificate with a ready-made plan of action. In fact, he admitted to being “disorganized.”
Still, he inherited a church at a crossroads, if not in crisis. Exposure of “backbiting, corruption and cronyism” inside the Vatican, the so-called “Vatileaks,” hastened the previous pontiff’s departure. Following Francis’ election, Erin McClam of NBC News wrote that he had “a to-do list as long as his cassock.” She suggested he faced seven major challenges: cleaning house at the Vatican; leading the church out of the sex abuse scandal; getting along with other faiths; winning the West; should women be priests and priests marry; modernization; and persecution. …
Leading the church out of the sex abuse scandal
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) noted Francis was not on its list of “the worst choices for pope.” There was no evidence of his complicity or cover-up of abuses. Still, he was among many of the world’s Catholic bishops — fully 25% — who failed to meet a deadline for establishing policies to deal with complaints and priests who were accused, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Three weeks into his pontificate, Francis I told the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s chief enforcement agency, to “act decisively with regard to cases of sexual abuse.” SNAP officials dismissed this as “empty rhetoric,” once again, “a top Catholic official asking another top Catholic official to take action about pedophile priests and complicit bishops … Big deal.”
It is clear that Francis I will need to do much more (discipline offenders, reveal histories) to establish his credentials as a leader capable of combating the scourge of predatory priests.
Grade: C
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