ROME (ITALY)
Washington Post
May 18, 2019
By Chico Harlan
His missions begin with a phone call from the Pope. “Do me a favour,” Pope Francis tends to say, and then Archbishop Charles Scicluna steels himself, packs his bags and books a flight to another country where something terrible has happened.
Within a church besieged by clerical abuse cases, Scicluna, 59, has become the Vatican’s emergency investigator — a priest and lawyer turned sex crimes specialist who is dispatched to scandal zones.
“Nothing prepares you for the wounds,” Scicluna said. “You don’t get used to it.”
He is sent to places where cardinals or bishops are accused of committing abuse; where officials are suspected of burying evidence or systematically ignoring victims; where the church has profoundly failed and squandered trust. Over the past decade and a half, he has led at least four major investigations on four continents, interviewing hundreds of victims, during feverish days he likens to an “ant working in summer.”
For most of that time, he has operated out of public view, refusing to speak about cases, returning to Rome from his missions with dossiers meant for the eyes of the Pope. But recently, with the church facing outside pressure to reform, Scicluna was vaulted by Francis into a broad and public role. The archbishop helped to plan a major anti-abuse summit in February and has worked on subsequent reforms.
As the Roman Catholic Church attempts to prove it can credibly police itself, it is presenting Scicluna as an example of how rigorous and caring it can be.
In interviews in his home country of Malta and inside the Vatican — where documents on the table are labelled in Latin “secreta” — Scicluna said he “hoped and prayed” that the institution, during his lifetime, can “become an example of best practices” for responding to and preventing abuse.
“But we will not solve the problem,” he said, calling abuse a pervasive global issue that goes beyond the church. “This will not go away.”
Scicluna has developed a reputation — even among some wary abuse victims and advocates — as one of the rare Vatican officials who appreciates the seriousness and scale of the church’s abuse crisis. Victims say Scicluna presents himself as a listener and fact-finder, sensitive but also meticulous in pinning down dates and specifics.
“He cared. It mattered to him,” said Juan Carlos Cruz, a whistleblowing Chilean abuse victim now living in the United States, who met with Scicluna last year. Cruz had volunteered to speak with Scicluna via Skype. Instead, Scicluna flew to New York and spoke with Cruz for four hours.
“I’ve been telling my story and dealing with church officials forever,” Cruz said. “It was the first time I felt empathy.”
Scicluna points to past papal quotes as guiding wisdom for handling the crisis. He chides the church gently, prescribing reforms for handling complaints, urging prelates to listen more openly to victims. He speaks about the importance of transparency and encourages church officials to co-operate with civil authorities, but his own investigations are fully in-house, and not even summaries of his findings are made public.
He has carried out special investigations on behalf of both Francis and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, and he considers his missions a “service” for the pontiff.
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