ROME (ITALY)
Crux
February 21, 2019
By Elise Harris
As part of Pope Francis’ high-stakes summit on clerical sexual abuse this week at the Vatican, during Thursday’s opening session he released a list of 21 “points for reflection”- including a couple that didn’t necessarily sit well with abuse survivors, who say they fall short of the Catholic Church’s pledge of zero tolerance.
One of those points, which Pope Francis said he got from suggestions made by bishops’ conferences ahead of the summit, dealt with releasing names of accused priests. Another concerned defrocking clergy guilty of abuse, and still another with listening structures so bishops can hear victims’ stories.
In comments following the opening session of Pope Francis’ Feb. 21-24 summit on the protection of minors in the Church, abuse survivor and co-founder of the U.S. branch of the Ending Clergy Abuse advocacy group Peter Isely said the pope’s list contains “not-very-concrete points,” despite a statement from Francis earlier in the day that people want “concrete, effective” measures.
The suggestions are not a sign of progress, Isley said, because “they don’t go anywhere, they’re not moving the line anywhere.”
“There’s nothing different in here than there was yesterday. Where is it in these points that if you’re a bishop or a cardinal and you’ve covered up child sex crimes, that you’re going to be removed from the priesthood or that any action will be taken against you?” he said.
“That’s not in here at all, so that’s not accountability and that’s not zero tolerance,” he said.
Speaking of point 15 on Francis’ list, which suggests that the Church’s traditional principle of “proportionality of punishment with respect to the crime committed” should be observed and asked for “deliberation” on defrocking, Isely said the idea that some priests guilty of abusing children would not lose their clerical status is “unacceptable.”
In a news conference after Thursday’s morning session, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, a former Vatican prosecutor on clerical abuse cases and a leading figure in the protection of minors in the Church, said that dismissing abuser priests from the clerical state is not always a given, but in his view, should happen on a “case-by-case” basis.
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