UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Religion News Service | By David Gibson
Posted: 12/04/2013
(RNS) Pope Francis has spent his first nine months buoyed by a wave of good will and positive coverage generated by his disarming style and frank talk about the need to reform the Catholic Church. But the pontiff may be in for a rough patch as media attention begins to shift to an issue that has bedeviled Rome for more than a decade: the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The pope himself put the spotlight on the crisis this week when he told bishops visiting from the Netherlands — where a 2011 report found that more than 20,000 children may have been abused in past decades — to support victims “along their painful path of healing.”
But critics said that the pontiff’s comments seemed almost perfunctory, coming at the end of a prepared speech that he handed to the bishops before they met privately for 90 minutes to discuss the grim prospects for Dutch Catholicism.
Moreover, the brevity of Francis’ remarks, their careful phrasing and the lack of any direct apology stood in pointed contrast to his powerful statements on issues such as economic justice and the need for the church to preach mercy and strip itself of pretensions.
Francis has also captivated the public by embracing disfigured pilgrims at the Vatican, cold-calling the downtrodden and washing the feet of young people at a detention center, but he has yet to meet with abuse victims.
“The world is starting to wonder if Pope Francis has forgotten the crisis,” Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org said after Francis’ meeting with the Dutch bishops on Monday (Dec. 2).
The pope, she said, “must address publicly the problems of clergy sexual abuse and its mismanagement with the same candor he has shown on a range of topics, from homosexuality to mediocre homilies. He has shown zest in ridding the Vatican of financial corruption. He must apply the same energy and determination toward ridding the church of bishops who have enabled abuse.”
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