UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
January 3, 2019
By Terence McKiernan
Editor’s note: Following is a reprint, with permission, of a letter written to Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich from Terence McKiernan, president of BishopsAccountability.org. It is posted in full here.
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich
Archbishop of Chicago
Archdiocese of Chicago
835 N. Rush Street
Chicago IL 60611-2030
Your Eminence,
I am writing to you about the upcoming summit in Rome. One of your colleagues in planning the event, Cardinal Oswaldo Gracias, says that I should be worried, and I am. “Either it will be successful, or it will be a disaster for the Church.”
But while I write you this letter, you and your brother bishops are beginning a retreat at Mundelein led by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., the Preacher to the Papal Household. This is the same Cantalamessa who once compared criticism of clergy abuse in the Church to “the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” Survivors of clergy abuse are the retreat masters you need now.
You and Cardinal Gracias and Archbishop Scicluna and Fr. Zollner advised the conference presidents to “reach out and visit with victim survivors of clergy sex abuse in your respective countries prior to the meeting in Rome, to learn first-hand the suffering that they have endured.” This is good advice. Will Cardinal DiNardo start with La Rosa Lopez survivor J.H., or with M.V., who spoke to police about the “duplicity of Cardinal DiNardo”?
This is one problem with the summit. Many of the conference presidents are the wrong men for the job, and the people know it.
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.