VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
BishopAccountability.org [Waltham MA]
January 25, 2023
By Anne Barrett Doyle
In an exclusive interview published today by the Associated Press, Pope Francis urges transparency around abuse cases and says that church leaders must speak out more about abuse of vulnerable adults.
https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-east-timor-vatican-city-religion-728a5af6ec4d36e54794a761fddd3fc4
The Pope says that after he discredited victims in Chile in 2018, “a bomb went off” in his head and he had a “conversion” moment, when he “saw the corruption of many bishops in this.”
On all of these points, Pope Francis is not credible.
It’s especially disingenuous of him to affirm transparency and care for adult victims while he continues to dismiss their allegations behind closed doors.
Indeed, it’s impossible to reconcile the Pope’s comments with his disregard of victims in four current cases of bishops accused of sexually abusing adults:
The Pope’s ongoing response to the case of now-convicted Argentine bishop Gustavo Zanchetta
In 2015 and 2017, Zanchetta met with the Pope to discuss his alleged sexual abuse of seminarians. The Pope’s response? He sent Zanchetta for treatment in Spain and then created a Vatican post for him, where the bishop stayed until an Argentine media outlet exposed his crimes in 2018. In 2020, after Argentine authorities criminally charged Zanchetta, the Pope reinstated him to his Vatican post. Even more striking, in the aftermath of Zanchetta’s criminal conviction last March, the Pope reportedly has sent the bishop’s canon lawyer to the bishop’s home diocese to investigate the whistleblowers and witnesses who testified against him during his trial. [See our summary of this case with links to sources: https://www.bishop-accountability.org/bishops/global-list-of-accused-bishops/#Zanchetta]
The Pope’s dismissal of allegations by two women of sexual abuse by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops
The revelation last week by a French Catholic publication of a second complaint against Ouellet creates an entirely new timeline of what Francis knew and when, regarding the powerful cardinal’s alleged assaults of women. Last August, we learned that Francis had summarily dismissed the first public allegation as unworthy of a full canonical process. Thanks to last week’s revelations, we now know that when the Pope issued that ruling, he already knew about a prior complaint against Ouellet. In both cases, he sent the same close associate of Ouellet to investigate the women’s claims. And in both cases, acting on the associate’s recommendations, the Pope ruled that the allegations didn’t even merit a full church investigation. [See our summary of this case with links to sources: https://www.bishop-accountability.org/bishops/global-list-of-accused-bishops/#Ouellet]
The Pope’s lenient treatment of French bishop who admitted to sexual abuse of young men
The Pope let Bishop Michel Santier remain head of the Créteil diocese until January 2021, a full year after the bishop had written the Pope a letter offering his resignation and admitting that he had sexually abused young men. The Pope also kept the public in the dark, as he has in every one of these cases. The case finally became public in October 2022 when a French publication broke the story, revealing that Santier had been sanctioned by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for sexually abusing two young men during confession. [See our summary of this case with a link to sources: https://www.bishop-accountability.org/bishops/global-list-of-accused-bishops/#Santier]
The Pope’s defense of former Paris archbishop accused of sexually abusing an impaired young woman
When Paris archbishop Michel Aupetit was forced to resign in late 2021 after media revelations of his alleged abuse of a young woman, the Pope accepted his resignation but vigorously defended him publicly, saying that the archbishop had been brought down by “hypocrisy” and “gossip.” We learned last month that the young woman alleging abuse had been under state guardianship as a vulnerable adult when the archbishop allegedly had sex with her. Prosecutors in Paris have launched a preliminary criminal investigation. The Pope has made no comment: his public response regarding accused bishops, when he says anything, is almost always to defend them, not to decry their crimes or express remorse to their victims. [See our summary of this case with links to sources: https://www.bishop-accountability.org/bishops/global-list-of-accused-bishops/#Aupetit]
At the end of today’s AP article, the Pope is quoted as saying that “with transparency comes a very nice thing, which is shame. Shame is a grace.”
For the sake of the Church, the Pope would do well to remind himself that transparency brings other graces too: validation of victims, alleviation of their anguish, advancement of justice, accountability of Church leaders, and, just possibly, restored trust in the Church itself.
About BishopAccountability.org
Founded in 2003, BishopAccountability.org maintains the world’s largest archive of documents on the problem of clergy sexual abuse, outside the Holy See’s own archives. We conduct research on child abuse by priests and religious and on the management of those cases by bishops and their staffs, superiors of religious orders, and the Holy See. An independent non-profit based in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, BishopAccountability.org is not a victims’ advocacy group and is not affiliated with any church, reform, or victims’ organization.
Contacts for BishopAccountability.org
Anne Barrett Doyle, Co-Director, BishopAccountability.org, barrett.doyle@comcast.net
Terence McKiernan, President and Co-Director, BishopAccountability.org, mckiernan1@comcast.net