ROME
Commonweal
By Robert Mickens
July 17, 2017
If you read the headlines of some publications, you would be convinced that Pope Francis’s project to renew and reform the Catholic Church has been dealt a staggeringly sharp blow and is now in deep crisis.
The journalists and commentators who are pushing this story line have what they believe is mounting evidence that the pontificate is on the ropes.
They point to the kerfuffle surrounding Francis’s controversial decision on June 30 not to renew Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s mandate as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
They also cite the temporary “forced suspension” one day earlier of Cardinal George Pell’s brief as head of the Secretariat for the Economy, due to still-unspecified charges of sexual abuse that the cardinal will soon confront in an Australian court. And they note the abrupt and still-unexplained resignation some eight days before that of Libero Milone, the Vatican’s first-ever auditor general and close aid to Pell.
Then there’s the case of at least two priest-officials in the Roman Curia who were recently reported to be engaging in scandalous homosexual behavior, a perennial dark side of clerical life in the Eternal City.
One was denounced for “cruising” St. Peter’s Square in search of sex with young men. The culprit is said to be a member of an important religious order and an archbishop in a major Vatican office. There are only six such people that fit the description: two are Jesuits, another two are Dominicans, one is a Legionary of Christ, and one is a Franciscan.
The other cleric reportedly caught in a gay sex scandal has been identified as a monsignor who serves as personal secretary to one of Pope Francis’s most important curia allies. The incident involving this priest supposedly included the use of cocaine. Some “journalists” have embellished their accounts of this sordid tale with sensationalized and factually erroneous details, including the assertion that the said cardinal knew (or should have known) what naughty business his secretary was up to.
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