ROME (ITALY)
Crux
February 25, 2019
By Elise Harris
Though Pope Francis’s high-stakes Feb. 21-24 summit on clerical sexual abuse has not yet yielded any major policy moves, one message was clear throughout the four-day gathering: The problem is global, and no one should leave thinking it’s not a concern in their own backyard.
Francis himself in his Sunday Angelus address said abuse is “a widespread problem on every continent,” and because of this, he wanted bishops throughout the world “to face it together, in a co-responsible and collegial way.”
Since the beginning of the abuse scandals three decades ago, they’ve sometimes been pegged as primarily an “American” or “Western” problem by Church leaders in countries where the crisis has yet to erupt. Cracking down has been met with a certain level of resistance by prelates in these regions who see the problem as secondary in comparison to other, more pressing issues.
However, speakers this week challenged that notion with direct, bold language.
During Friday’s morning session, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, India, a member of the pope’s council of cardinals and one of four members of the summit’s organizing committee, said, “No bishop may say to himself, ‘This problem of abuse in the Church does not concern me, because things are different in my part of the world.’”
“This, brothers and sisters, is just not true,” he said. Acknowledging that “we in leadership roles did not do enough,” Gracias said the “entire Church must take an honest look [and] act decisively to prevent abuse from occurring in the future, and to do whatever possible to foster healing for victims.”
Similarly, Sister Veronica Openibo of Nigeria, one of just three women tapped to speak at the summit, reinforced the message Saturday, telling the 190 participants that “probably like many of you, I have heard many Africans and Asians say that this is not our issue in countries in Africa and Asia.”
“It is a problem in Europe, the Americas, Canada and Australia,” Openibo said, adding that other problems in the region such as poverty, illness, war, and violence “does not mean that the area of sexual abuse should be downplayed or ignored…The Church has to be proactive in facing it.”
Prelates did not mince words, vocalizing the Church’s failures to properly address the abuse crisis and calling for the “humility” to recognize these errors and to repent.
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