O’malley Says Cardinals" Denial of the Seriousness of Sexual Abuse Is Fading
By John L. Allen
Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said Monday that denial among some of his fellow cardinals from around the world about the seriousness of the Church’s child sexual abuse scandals, if not quite dead, has at least been driven underground — in part because of the strong example of Pope Francis. “The fact that the Holy Father was willing to write a letter to all the bishops’ conferences calling on them to meet with victims is extremely important,” O’Malley said in an exclusive interview with Crux. “There’s great concern (among the cardinals) and a realization the Church has to do something, but a lot of people don’t know what to do,” he said. “They’re open to listening.” At the same time, he acknowledged that a huge gap remains in the Church’s response, especially accountability for bishops who drop the ball in making “zero tolerance” policies stick, and that the Church’s inaction to date had hurt its credibility. On that front, O’Malley said he hopes to have a “pretty finished product” in terms of a new accountability system, including a tribunal located within the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to present to the pope within two months. On other matters, O’Malley told Crux: A proposal from the pope’s council of nine cardinal-advisors, a body on which O’Malley sits, to create two super-departments in the Vatican, one for justice and peace and the other for the family and laity, is not just a hypothesis, but “the way things are going.” A layperson may not be able to serve as the top official of those new offices, but the cardinals have asked for clarification on how laity, and especially women, can hold other positions of leadership in the Curia, the Vatican’s main administrative bureaucracy. O’Malley wasn’t surprised by a recent report to cardinals that the Vatican has $1.5 billion in previously unreported assets, because Vatican accounting systems until recently “left room for a lot of corruption.” He said the pope’s elevation on Saturday of cardinals from a staggeringly global variety of locales, including first-ever cardinals from Myanmar, Cape Verde and Tonga, was “really encouraging.” O’Malley spoke to Crux in Rome at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University, during a presentation regarding the university’s Centre for Child Protection, an outgrowth of a 2012 Vatican summit on the effort to combat child sexual abuse. The following are excerpts from that conversation. Crux: The G9 commission of cardinals, of which you are a member, made a presentation on Thursday to all the cardinals about where reform of the Roman Curia stands. What’s your sense on how the cardinals responded to it? O’Malley: I think a lot of them were surprised, because I don’t think many of them knew how much had taken place, nor even how many moving parts there are. Overall, I think there was a very positive reaction. From the outside, the headline was the idea of creating two new super-departments, one for justice and peace and other for family and laity. From the inside, are those also the cornerstones? No. The cardinals had a lot to say about things like that, but I think what’s been done in the area of finances and transparency and trying to draw things together … the cardinals were [also] happy about that. What was said about the study of communications, which is obviously an important area in the life of the Church … we need to make some very important decisions about that, too. On the super-departments, is that by now a settled conclusion of the G9, or just one hypothesis among others? More from Crux Rome center designed to fight sexual abuse expands its reach Cardinals arrived at a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Sunday. The meetings of the College of Cardinals, the pope's Council of Cardinals, and the consistory at which 20 new cardinals were elevated, can reveal much about what the Princes of the Church are thinking. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) Sights and sounds from the Iowa caucuses of the Catholic Church St. Paul attorney releases names of 17 clergy accused of sex abuse More They’ve already made a presentation to the heads of dicasteries and received their input. It would seem to me this is the way we’re going to go. Having presented it to all the cardinals, people have a chance even after the consistory to make their ideas known. In general, however, I interpreted this as the way things are going. There are a lot of questions about the differences between being a congregation or a pontifical council, for instance, and that needs to be sorted out. There are people on both sides of that question. During a briefing, the Vatican spokesman said that in his opinion the heads of these two new super-departments could not be laypersons, but would have to be cardinals. Is that your view as well? I think so. The question is whether the second person [in the department] would be able to be a lay person, including a woman. The traditional position has been that decision-making officials in these departments have to be clergy because they exercise delegated authority in the name of the pope. Are you saying that’s under review? It’s something for which the cardinals have asked for more study and clarification. We’re anxious to have lay people to have positions of leadership in the Curia. I wouldn’t say it’s a settled issued, it’s an open issue. We are anxious to have women and lay people take those positions, it would be very helpful. That’s one reason I was in favor of keeping the Pontifical Councils because I thought there would be more chances of getting lay people and women into those roles. You know, historically we’ve had situations in which abbesses were practically running dioceses! It needs to be studied. Within the limits set by Catholic theology and law, you want to see laity holding as many leadership positions as possible? Exactly. When you heard Cardinal George Pell report that his Secretariat for the Economy had discovered $1.5 billion in assets that the Vatican didn’t know it had, what was your reaction? I wasn’t surprised. Somebody referred to the way as finances were done before as artigianale [hand-crafted]. I remember going to a meeting once in Buenos Aires for a meeting of one of the Pontifical Councils, and at the end we went into this room and there was a young lady there with a cigar box full of money asking, ‘How much did you spend?’ I said, ‘I’ll go and get you the receipts’, and she said, ‘No, just more or less.’ I mean, that’s the way things were done. Obviously, it left room for a lot of corruption if people aren’t being honest. When you heard the financial reports last week, did you feel like you were being told the truth about what the situation actually is? Yes. I had meetings with [Joseph F.X.] Zahra [the senior lay member of the Vatican’s new finance council] and others, and I have great confidence in them. I think these are people who really want to help the church. They’re volunteers and they don’t have a dog in this fight, they’re doing it for love of God and love of the church. The fact all that money is there must be compared to the shortfall in the pension fund, so it really is sort of a wash. The other question is that the Holy Father really is death on waste, so we have to be sure our resources are being used for the mission of the church and for the poor. As I say, when I was a missionary bishop [in the Virgin Islands] I had an annual budget of $30,000, and I’m sure there are bishops in other parts of the church who have even less. At the same time, in other places we’re wasting incredible amounts of money. The first task of Pell and his people is to find out what the resources actually are, and then to make sure we’re not wasting them. Do you feel like Pell and this team have achieved a breakthrough in that first sense, by at least delivering a credible report on where things stand? I’m thrilled. Anybody who used to be on the old council of 15 cardinals for economic affairs knows the frustration level we used to feel, particularly the Americans though not just the Americans, I have to say. The fact that on those commissions now they put lay experts, people of extraordinary capacity and very credentialed and prestigious people who aren’t going to sign their name to dishonest reports. There’s too much at stake for them. One element in that report is the potential under-valuation of the Vatican’s real estate holdings. Would you agree that getting an honest market assessment is important? Of course, yes, that’s fundamental. Once again, we’re in the culture of this country [Italy] and the way things are being done here is the way things are done in the Vatican. The truth is that the taxation system here sometimes encourages people to under-report their assets and so on. Pell told us that when he asked people in the Vatican to produce receipts for expenses, the reply was, ‘Sure, we can get you receipts, but everything’s going to cost more!’ Is it fair to say that if the Vatican gets its financial act together, it would be helpful for the church at every level? Definitely, and also for society, particularly Italian society. It would have a real impact here. How did the cardinals react to the presentation you made on the efforts to combat clerical sexual abuse? It was very interesting. It was 5 in the afternoon, so I deliberately gave a very spirited presentation to keep people awake, and it worked. One French cardinal the next day at breakfast said to me, ‘I had a conversion during your talk.’ I asked what he meant, and he said he’d come to understand how important this is and how much damage has been done to the victims. I was very moved by that. A cardinal from Nicaragua came up and said I want you to talk to the bishops’ conferences in Central America. I thought there was a lot of good will. Was there any discussion on the floor among the cardinals after your presentation? There was, but they didn’t go into detail over issues such as accountability [for bishops], even though I hammered away on those things. I think they took the presentation as a whole. If you’d made this presentation to the College of Cardinals a decade ago, there probably would have been a debate about whether the reforms you’re proposing are even a good idea. Has that denial gone away? I would say there’s great concern and a realization the Church has to do something, but a lot of people don’t know what to do. They’re open to listening. That’s qualitatively different from the reaction you would have gotten not so long ago, yes? In other words, denial has been driven underground? Yes, certainly. The fact that the Holy Father was willing to write a letter to all the bishops’ conferences calling on them to meet with victims is extremely important. What’s the fundamental challenge now? First of all, it’s to come up with good procedures to which people will commit themselves. A lot of the things that have been sent in, I understand, are very weak. You mean guidelines from bishops’ conferences around the world? Yes, exactly. That’s part of the problem. We need to work on those guidelines, and get people committed to them. Our commission will do some of that, particularly with some of the developing countries that really haven’t done anything because they’re so under-resourced. We’re going to go and offer to help them. After you get the policies in place, then you need a massive education and training program. You also need some sort of mechanism to evaluate compliance. We need that to be installed centrally in the church, and we also need a procedure for accountability, [what to do] when a superior or a bishop drops the ball or neglects to implement these things. When are you going to have a system for accountability? We’re working on it. Right now, the bishops are answerable to the pope, which means in practice that the Congregation for Bishops has to deal with it, but they don’t have any mechanism for it. Things drag on and on. If there were defined procedures and tribunals that dealt with these problems, it would be different. First of all, the bishop would be able to defend himself. Then you’d have a decision, and everyone might not agree with it, but it would be clear that the church has dealt with this, it’s been looked at, and a decision was made. This is what we’re working on. Our next meeting with the Holy Father is in two months, and I hope to have a pretty finished product to show him at that time. The job of the commission is to make recommendations for best practices, procedures and policies to address these various problems. One that we’re most concerned about is accountability, because right now there’s really nothing in place. Who’s going to implement those recommendations? There would have to be a tribunal that does it, probably in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. With regard to the consistory this week, you’re someone who’s long called on the Church to be more sensitive to the experiences of Catholics outside Europe and the United States. Did it do your heart good to see Pope Francis raise up such a global crop of new cardinals? It was wonderful. For instance, we had a lot of Cape Verdeans come from Boston, and I was with them yesterday. The people from Tonga were so happy, it was really encouraging. I tried to visit those cardinals in particular who have large constituencies in Boston, such as the Vietnamese and the Portuguese and the Mexicans and the Cape Verdeans and others. When you see the impact the presence of a cardinal makes in those parts of the world, it’s really impressive.
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