AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times
January 31, 2013
Barney Zwartz
Australia now has two inquiries into the sexual abuse of children by clergy. Will they be the circuit-breaker that triggers the changes so many Catholics want or will the church retreat behind a wall of obstruction and concealment?
CARDINAL Bernard Law of Boston was the first, and so far only, archbishop to resign over public revulsion at his handling of child sex abuse by his clergy. Named in hundreds of lawsuits, subject of dramatic public protests, and publicly rejected by 58 of his priests, Law resigned in December 2002.
Pope John Paul II’s response, widely seen as a gesture of blatant contempt for Boston’s faithful, was to appoint Law archpriest of one of Rome’s four great basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore.
The message to the disgraced cardinal was clear: ”You are one of us, and we will look after you.” To many inside and outside the church, protecting the church and its clerics has always been the Vatican’s priority – and, they say, it still is.
John Paul II also protected and promoted notorious abusers such as Marcial Maciel, founder the of Legionaries of Christ movement. Indeed, the Pope’s first response to the expanding American crisis was to blame a ”hostile” media, and his fallback position was to claim clergy abuse was purely an anglophone issue.
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