Response to Press Conference of Cardinal Sean O'Malley and the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors

By Anne Barrett
BishopAccountability.org
February 7, 2015

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/

While we remain skeptical of the Commission's ability to change the way the Catholic Church manages sexually abusive priests, we are heartened by Cardinal Sean O'Malley's reassurance today that the Commission is going to recommend accountability measures for poor church officials. Catholic bishops and religious superiors throughout the world continue to conceal, protect, and retain sexual abusers in the priesthood. Our recent research in the Philippines confirms this. If Commission members are going to fulfill the vision articulated by Pope Francis earlier this week -- to become an "important and effective means" of helping the Pope “rid the Church of the scourge” of sexual assaults by clergy -- we urge them to:

1. Insist on accountability measures that are tough and unambiguous. Church officials who endanger children and protect dangerous priests must be removed and censured.

2. Insist on a church abuse policy that is strict, uniform, and global. Cultural norms are not an acceptable excuse for putting children in danger. A priest who would be deemed unsafe by bishops in one country must not be allowed to work in another.

3. Take issue with Pope Francis’s instruction to church officials this week that the provisions of the CDF’s May 2011 Circular Letter be “fully implemented.” This document is more about due process for priests than protection of children. Some of its provisions are dangerously weak.

4. Ask why the Circular Letter contains NO provision regarding zero-tolerance – that is, the permanent removal of a priest guilty of an act of child sexual abuse.

5. Demand that true zero tolerance become the church’s global standard. It must be stated in every abuse policy of every bishops' conference and religious institute.

6. Avoid recommending universal adoption of the U.S. church’s norms unless those are tightened. While stricter than the Circular Letter provisions, the U.S. norms have proved to be too lenient. They give U.S. bishops too much discretion in deciding whether to remove an accused priest.

7. Insist that bishops and religious superiors be required to: a) investigate every allegation; b) remove accused clergy during investigations; and c) submit all allegations to independent, lay review boards.

8. Insist too that every abuse policy require church officials to report allegations to civil authorities, even when not mandated to do so under local law.

9. Recommend that the following red-flag language be removed from the Circular Letter and from every Conference’s abuse policy: “the bishop has the duty to treat all his priests as father and brother.” This language belongs in documents about doctrine, not sex crimes by clergy. Bishops worldwide invoke this principle to justify not reporting child-molesting priests to secular law enforcement. Bishop Charles Scicluna confirmed this in a 2010 interview. A bishop calling the police on a priest is “a gesture comparable to that of a father denouncing his own son,” he said, and the church therefore does “not force bishops to denounce their own priests.” The abuse policy of the Philippine Church is explicit on this score: its bishops do not report priests to civil authorities, since the bishop-priest relationship is "analogous to that between father and son."

10. Insist that the norms require transparency. Bishops and religious superiors must be required to publicly release information about credibly accused clergy, including their names, assignment histories, alleged crimes, and church files. And this transparency should begin with Pope Francis. Just as he has modeled a simple lifestyle for the world's bishops, he could set an example of transparency, by disclosing information about credibly accused clergy he has managed during his career.

About BishopAccountability.org Founded in 2003 and based near Boston, Massachusetts, USA, BishopAccountability.org is a large online archive of documents, reports, and news articles documenting the global abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. An independent non-profit, it is not a victims' advocacy group and is not affiliated with any church, reform, or victims' organization. In 2014, its website hosted 1.5 million unique visitors.

Contact for BishopAccountability.org

Anne Barrett Doyle, Co-Director, barrett.doyle@comcast.net, 781-439-5208 cell Terence McKiernan, President and Co-Director, mckiernan1@comcast.net, 508-479-9304