ROME (ITALY)
The Globe and Mail
February 19, 2019
By Ric Reguly
A Vatican conference on sexual abuse will test the credibility of Pope Francis this week as abuse victims gather in Rome to call for zero tolerance for clerics who molest or rape children and escape jail time.
But the four-day conference on the protection of minors, which starts on Thursday after two months of planning, is already being dismissed by prominent Vatican watchers and victims’ organizations as rushed and a probable letdown.
Rev. Thomas Reese, a U.S. Jesuit priest, author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church and a senior analyst at Religion News Service thinks the event is too short and cluttered to deliver a sea change in Vatican policy – and that Francis lacks the iron will necessary to implement his no-excuses stand.
In a comment piece, Father Reese said that “in order [for the conference] to succeed, Francis will have to lay down the law and simply tell the bishops what to do, rather than consulting with them. He’ll have to present a solution to the crisis and tell them to go home and implement it. Francis will not do that. He does not see himself as the CEO of the Catholic Church.”
At a presentation at the Foreign Press Association on Tuesday in Rome, Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S. research group that tracks church abuse cases around the world, said she believes that cover-ups are still the norm in many Catholic dioceses, even though Francis talks tough.
She noted that only in one country – the United States – has the church taken a “zero-tolerance” approach to abusive priests. “So much is at stake this week,” she said. “The Catholics of the world are grieving. … [But] I believe the church is nowhere near to enacting reforms.”
The conference will see almost 200 bishops, archbishops, cardinals and members of religious and victims’ groups gather to discuss the themes of responsibility, accountability and transparency in the fight to prevent the abuse of minors. Almost every country in which the church is active will send a bishop or his spokesman. Canada’s main representative is Bishop Lionel Gendron of Quebec’s Saint-Jean-Longueuil diocese and the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB).
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