UNITED STATES
WBUR
Thu, Jun 05, 2014
by Rich Barlow
Is Pope Francis really zeroing in on “zero tolerance” for clerical pedophiles and their episcopal enablers?
The pontiff’s recent declaration to that effect brought headlines but no action against abusers, critics said. Their despair is premature; Francis wouldn’t be the first leader who temporized before doing something that had to be done. Think of Lincoln, who vexed abolitionists by waiting two years after his election before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Or Franklin Roosevelt, who promised a balanced budget in his first presidential campaign, wising up once in office and siding with damn-the-deficit New Dealers. (If you think it profane to analogize the Vatican to crass politics, you haven’t been reading the news.)
Francis’s comments followed a harsh United Nations report, the second this year, on the Vatican’s management of abuse. Like Lincoln and FDR, he will have to back his words with deeds — more than just celebrating Mass with some abuse victims, which he also announced during an in-flight press conference last month. He further told reporters that the Vatican is investigating three unidentified bishops on sex abuse-related issues; he didn’t say whether the trio are alleged molesters themselves or suspected of concealing abuse, a practice among some mitered miscreants with which we’re sadly familiar.
Factor in Francis’s demonstrated compassion and his creation of an advisory panel on abuse — including Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who won kudos for his handling of abuse cases — and there’s reason to hope this pope will follow through with publicizing credibly accused abusers and punishing bishops who covered up for them. Those reasonable demands come variously from victims’ advocates and even some Catholic traditionalists. Perhaps some names on this scandal will serve as markers for assessing the pope. Here are three clerics, named in the U.N. report, whose cases will be instructive as to whether the church has learned the tragic lessons of its past sins:
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