DALLAS (TX)
Dallas Morning News
February 26, 2019
By David Tarrant
Dallas advocates for sex-abuse survivors expressed frustration and disappointment after an historic four-day summit led by Pope Francis to confront the global crisis within the Catholic Church.
The summit, which wrapped up Sunday, brought together nearly 200 bishops and other Catholic leaders from around the world to focus on prevention of clergy sexual abuse.
But Lisa Kendzior, co-leader of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, said in a statement that church leaders should’ve taken more action.
“After four long days in Rome, survivors and advocates who had hoped to see Catholic church officials take concrete action towards ending the clergy abuse and cover-up crisis were left disappointed,” the DFW-SNAP statement said.
“No bishop who had been involved in covering-up or minimizing allegations was fired. No directive was handed down to order bishops to turn over their secret abuse files to police. No punishment was agreed upon nor system put in place for disciplining those bishops who continue to cover-up abuse cases in the future. In other words, no child was made safer and no survivor was helped during this summit,” the statement said.
Francis during the summit did propose 21 “reflection points” to curb clergy sex abuse. Those reflection points included procedures to make bishops accountable and to involve non-ordained experts, or lay people, in abuse investigations.
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