UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org
By Terence McKiernan
As the first anniversary of his election approaches, the interview of Pope Francis in Corriere della Sera and La Nacion helps us understand the Pope’s long silence and inaction regarding the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church. It is not that he has been slowly preparing a major initiative; it is that he doesn’t get it. In the interview, Francis does not offer an apology to the hundreds of thousands of children abused by priests and religious – he doesn’t even express sorrow. Instead, he is triumphalist about clergy abuse of children and silent about the complicity of bishops and major superiors: “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have moved with transparency and accountability.” The chutzpah of this self-assessment is breathtaking, coming as it does immediately after Francis refused to provide data to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and refused to extradite Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski.
By the end of the Pope’s remarks, the Church itself has become the victim: “No one else has done more. Yet the Church is the only one to be attacked.” It is astonishing, at this late date, that Pope Francis would recycle such tired and defensive rhetoric, apparently blaming the survivors and the journalists who have informed us about these crimes. What little transparency and accountability the Church has shown, has been compelled by survivors, journalists, advocates, and activists. Pope Francis, who is famous for his humility, should have acknowledged this crucial contribution.
This interview is not a good sign. One year into his photogenic papacy, we are still waiting for Pope Francis to take action regarding the sexual abuse of children by priests and members of religious orders. Sexual abuse is acknowledged to be the gravest crisis the Catholic church has faced since the Reformation, but it is not even mentioned by Francis in his lengthy Evangelii Gaudium. Yet the sexual abuse of children by clergy is a serious impediment to the evangelization that Francis seeks.
Pope Francis has met with drug addicts, immigrants, prisoners, and the physically disadvantaged. But he has not met with clergy sexual abuse survivors, who have been directly harmed by the Pope’s brother priests and by his brother bishops. The victims of sexual abuse should be the Pope’s first priority, because the Church’s responsibility to them is immediate and her ability to remedy the harm is greatest. “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds,” Pope Francis said in his interview with Antonio Spadaro, S.J., editor-in-chief of La Civiltà Cattolica. Pope Francis has this ability already but he has yet to extend it to the church’s own wounded.
Pope Francis is a master of the humble expression, and in those terms, it is time for him to “fish or cut bait.” We urge him to take the following steps, using the energy of his first anniversary to correct his feckless response to abuse in the past year. Children worldwide, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have been put at risk by his inaction.
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