ROME (ITALY)
The Guardian
February 21, 2019
By Catherine Pepinster
When I got married in 2003 it turned out that my wedding was caught up – unbeknown to me – in the abuse crisis that has engulfed the Catholic church. There were three Benedictine monk-priests there, one as celebrant, two as guests. One of the guests was later tried and acquitted of assaulting a child, although he was banned from living in his monastery. The other, David Pearce, would go on to be convicted in 2009 of the assault of five children, and jailed for five years. At the time of the wedding I had no idea of any murmurs about child sexual abuse. But others did hold deep suspicions.
Abuse was certainly known about in Rome, where documents passed across the desk of the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.When Ratzinger stood in for the dying John Paul II at the torchlit Stations of the Cross on Good Friday 2005, he declaimed: “How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him.” Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005. He did more than John Paul had done in 26 years, by removing the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel, from office after his own investigations revealed the extent of Maciel’s abuse of boys and seminarians.
But despite this decisive start, his papacy became engulfed by the abuse scandal. Eventually, exhausted by it, Benedict dramatically resigned and was succeeded by Pope Francis in 2013. But his papacy has also been mired in scandal over child abuse. What could once be seen as incidents involving a few rotten apples now suggest something rotten at the heart of the institution.
This weekend will see the most ambitious attempt yet to deal with the crisis, with a four-day summit, ordered by Francis, that brings together almost 190 church leaders plus Vatican officials, invited experts and guest speakers. It is being presented by organisers as a turning point for the way in which the church handles allegations across the globe and the way it strengthens child protection policies. If it is indeed a turning point, the survivors of clerical sexual abuse and lay Catholics, exhausted by the constant revelations, will be mightily relieved. But they will also be wanting the church to explain why there has been a pandemic of abuse over so many years, and why abusers were left free to assault and rape children.
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