MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe
By John L. Allen Jr. and Rosa Nguyen GLOBE STAFF AND GLOBE CORRESPONDENT JUNE 11, 2015
Pope Francis, addressing arguably the biggest point of contention over the Vatican’s response to the Catholic child sexual abuse scandals, endorsed new procedures on Wednesday to judge bishops charged with violating the church’s “zero tolerance” policy for abuse by clergy members.
The Vatican announced Francis has approved the creation of a church tribunal to judge the accused bishops and to ensure they are punished by the church in addition to facing criminal penalties.
The idea — recommended by a panel headed by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston — comes as the pope’s handling of the long-lasting crisis has been drawing fire around the world. Some sex-abuse survivors and their representatives reacted cautiously to the new approach.
“I will withhold judgment of the committee until it’s proved it will do anything. There have been all kinds of committees over the years that essentially have done nothing,’’ said Ann Hagan Webb, the New England representative for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
A British abuse survivor, Peter Saunders, who sits on an antiabuse commission advising the pontiff and who has been critical of the Catholic Church on other fronts, called the creation of the tribunal a “positive step” that shows “the pope is listening.” …
An American clearinghouse for information related to the Catholic abuse scandals, BishopAccountability.org, released a statement Wednesday calling the new tribunal “a promising step” but warning that making it work would require “a courage and an aggressive commitment that have so far been sadly lacking.”
Roderick MacLeish, a lawyer whose firm represented hundreds of victims in the Boston Archdiocese sex-abuse scandal, said Cardinal Bernard Law, O’Malley’s predecessor in Boston, should be a focus of the new tribunal. Law was criticized for failing to adequately address the sex-abuse scandal in Boston.
“The first person who should be on the list is Cardinal Law. If this tribunal is going to be meaningful, it has to start in Boston,” MacLeish said.
Mitchell Garabedian, another Boston lawyer who has represented clergy sex-abuse victims, called the creation of the tribunal “cosmetic in nature.’’
“The members of the tribunal will probably be made up of church officials who had known of the sexual abuse of children by priests for decades yet did not act to protect children,” Garabedian said.
The BishopAccountability.org group also cited an American prelate who might become a target for the tribunal: Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who has been accused of allowing at least two priests to continue serving despite facing either allegations or convictions for the abuse of minors.
The situation in St. Paul-Minneapolis is so bad that the archdiocese is in bankruptcy from paying victims’ claims, and prosecutors filed criminal charges last week against the archdiocese as a corporation for failing to protect children.
The new tribunal will be housed within the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which lends it immediate political heft.
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