DENVER (CO)
Crux
November 5, 2018
By Elise Harris
Denise Buchanan, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse and advocate for fellow victims, has said she was disappointed in the handling of the issue during last month’s Synod of Bishops on youth, and that a lack of a unified consensus is thwarting any progress that could be made.
With some bishops making vocal apologies for the Church’s failures and others trying to downplay the problem, depicting it as a mainly Western issue, it’s clear that prelates “don’t know what to do,” Buchanan said.
Speaking to Crux over the phone from Los Angeles, she said that when the Oct. 3-28 Synod of Bishops on young people, faith and vocational discernment came to a close, “it ended with a whimper because there was no agreement on a lot of the issues they had on their agenda,” particularly clerical abuse.
“That’s very telling,” she said, “because if you have factions within global groups, within the Vatican and the Vatican hierarchy that are fighting with each other, how can there be any consensus, how can there be any way to move forward?”
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