UNITED STATES
Boston Herald
[with video]
By: Jack Encarnacao
Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s stunningly candid “60 Minutes” interview — tackling thorny subjects such as clergy sex abuse and ordination of women in the shadow of St. Peter’s — has made Boston’s archbishop the American face of an extraordinary papacy that takes tough questions and embraces criticism, in stark contrast to centuries of Vatican custom.
There was a “certain rawness” to O’Malley’s answers to Norah O’Donnell that typifies the papacy of Francis, said Dennis Doyle, professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, a prominent Catholic research university in Ohio. “I think that there were signs that he was not completely prepped on what to say even. We weren’t getting canned answers on every issue. I do think that signals something about what Pope Francis is trying to model, and calling for.”
Boston College theologian the Rev. James Bretzke said O’Malley, the pope’s closest American advisor, has “gauged that now is the time when he can be a little more forthright.” Under prior papacies, he said, such candor “would have been certainly a nonstarter.”
Bretzke said what he saw was “confronto Americano” — or frank American-style discussion — which had largely been antithetical to the Vatican.
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