UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Brian Roewe | Sep. 15, 2016
Eight months without reply, Catholic advocates for survivors of clergy sexual abuse have hit resend on their request for a Vatican investigation into the abuse policies of U.S. bishops.
The Catholic Whistleblowers mailed a second letter Sept. 1 to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, addressed to its prefect Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada.
The brief one-page letter summarizes and refers back to another letter the advocacy group sent at the beginning of the year. That first letter raised concerns that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was not fully implementing its zero tolerance policy toward abusive priests, and as a result putting children and communities at risk while also creating scandal in the church.
Specifically, Catholic Whistleblowers argues the conference and its bishops have not reported all appropriate abuse allegations to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and lack a mechanism to assure bishops pass such cases to the congregation at all.
“The USCCB established a Zero Tolerance policy regarding clergy sexual abuse and then has worked against its own commitment? What motivates such behavior?” wrote Fr. James Connell, a member of the Whistleblower Steering Committee, repeating a line from the first letter, in all 13 pages, to Ouellet.
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