ROME
CRUX
March 25, 2018
By John L. Allen Jr.
Since Pope Francis called a summit of Catholic bishops on youth and discernment two years ago, fixing it for this October, speculation has swirled about which topics would loom largest during the meeting, given that its themes seem vast enough to embrace almost everything under the sun.
We won’t really know until the Synod of Bishops gets underway, but if 300 young people from around the world who met in Rome this week to provide input to the bishops have anything to do with it, two tough subjects will be unavoidable: The Church’s sexual abuse scandals, and the role of women in Catholicism.
“The Church should condemn actions such as sexual abuse and the mismanagement of power and wealth,” the young advisers said in a concluding document from their reflections released in a Vatican news conference on Saturday.
“The Church should continue to enforce her no-tolerance stance on sexual abuse within her institutions, and her humility will undoubtedly raise its credibility among the world’s young people,” they said.
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