UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition
Kristine Ward
Pope Francis waited as long as he could – especially when courage was not the option he would choose.
From the beginning he kept his distance, even when pushed by the phantom commission of one of the Council of Eight Cardinals, Sean O’Malley — especially when the survivors were not the ones around whom he would circle the wagons.
He waited as long as he could to address sexual abuse – especially since his personality and style reviews have been boffo.
But he must be given this, he does have a sense of timing.
At the one year mark, he knew the string had run out.
It was just a matter of how to do it.
He chose to walk into his declaration of how the largest crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in 500 years will be handled in his papacy through the lead of a reporter’s question – and he was smart enough to let the reporter shape the backdrop against which he spoke.
Here is the excerpt from the English translation of the interview Pope Francis gave to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera:
Question: The scandals that rocked the life of the Church are fortunately in the past. A public appeal was made to you, on the delicate theme of the abuse of minors, published by (the Italian newspaper) Il Foglio and signed by Besancon and Scruton, among others, that you would raise your voice and make it heard against the fanaticisms and the bad conscience of the secularized world that hardly respects infancy.
Answer: I want to say two things. The cases of abuses are terrible because they leave extremely deep wounds. Benedict XVI was very courageous and he cleared a path. The Church has done so much on this path. Perhaps more than anyone. The statistics on the phenomenon of the violence against children are shocking, but they also show clearly that the great majority of abuses take place in the family environment and around it. The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No other has done
Like it or not, and in this space we do not like it, he is clear: he has chosen clerics over children.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.