Time for Truth, Justice in Catholic Clerical Abuse Scandal

By David Andreatta
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
December 13, 2018

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/columnists/andreatta/2018/12/13/rochester-priest-sex-abuse-time-truth-catholic-scandal-andreatta/2298367002/

In recently purging another priest from the Diocese of Rochester who was found to have abused children, Bishop Salvatore Matano issued a statement pledging to continue “the many important initiatives we have undertaken” to protect young and vulnerable people.

Among those were the creation of an independent review board to probe sex abuse allegations and advise the diocese; mandatory background checks for clerics and others in the diocese who work with children; and an established code of conduct.

Such initiatives are worthwhile, but they’ve done little to bring justice to victims and even less to restore the shattered confidence in the Catholic Church felt by many of the faithful.

For that, two things need to happen — one plausible, one implausible, and both necessary.

First, the implausible.

There needs to be a public airing of how so many pedophiles got into the priesthood, how so many bishops looked the other way, and how revelations of clerical abuse and cover-ups are still surfacing after journalists peeled back the first layer of the onion 17 years ago.

The Roman Catholic Church could take a page from the governments of South Africa, Germany and Canada and other countries that confronted painful pasts head-on with truth and reconciliation commissions, and convene its own truth panels.

Do it on the diocesan level, and compel clerics — active, inactive and retired — to answer questions under oath and on the record in a public forum about their level of participation in or knowledge of the abuse scandal here and elsewhere.

Put former Bishop Matthew Clark on the stand. He was ordained Rochester’s bishop in 1979, and although he resolved most of the abuse cases we know of in the diocese before his retirement in 2012, he has yet to answer for what took him so long.

Matano wasn’t in Rochester when the sex abuse scandal broke in 2002. He was in Washington, D.C., where he had been the secretary to the apostolic nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States, since January 2000.

All communication between the pope and American clerics goes through the nuncio, as it did in November 2000, when a New York City priest wrote the nuncio to warn the Vatican against appointing Theodore McCarrick the archbishop of Washington, and to reveal what he knew about McCarrick’s long history of sexually harassing seminarians.

The Vatican acknowledged receiving the priest’s letter six years later. Meanwhile, McCarrick had been made a cardinal, and would become a leading advocate for the church’s abuse reforms until he was removed from ministry just this year for molesting an altar boy.

A couple months ago, I asked Matano through the Rochester Diocese spokesman whether the letter about McCarrick ever crossed his desk while he was at the nunciature.

Diocese spokesman, Doug Mandelaro, responded that Matano didn’t see the letter and noted, correctly, that there are several secretaries to the nuncio and that, according to the priest who sent the letter, the communication was intended for the nuncio’s eyes only.

Matano worked for the nuncio until 2005, however, putting him in a position to glean a lot of information about how the unfolding scandal in the United States was being handled at the highest levels of the church.

We need to hear from him and others like him, as well as low-ranking clerics who may have known or suspected something was amiss in their brothers’ bedrooms. Their silence has allowed the wound of this scandal to fester.

Now, the plausible.

Church leaders in New York need to publicly get behind legislation extending or eliminating the statutes of limitations for the reporting of, and seeking restitution for, child sexual abuse.

New York lags behind many states in easing limitations despite having a viable solution in the proposed Child Victims Act.

The bill would give victims until the age of 50 to bring a lawsuit against their abusers and the institutions that enabled them, instead of the current age of 23. It would also establish a one-year window in which anyone could sue, even if the statute of limitations had expired.

More: Andreatta: Diocese of Rochester has paid $1.6 million to 20 sex abuse victims

The measure enjoys bipartisan support in Albany, and has twice passed the Assembly with the backing of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But it hasn’t become law because the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to let the bill come to the floor.

The hang-up is the one-year window, which the New York State Catholic Conference — the voice of bishops in New York on public policy matters — contends creates two classes of victims by unfairly shielding public institutions from litigation.

It is a claim that supporters of the bill dispute and one that, frankly, doesn’t appear to hold water.

The real fear, it seems, is that a wave of lawsuits could bankrupt the church. That hasn’t happened in other states, even those with wider windows.

But even if it could, men of God ought to be less concerned with protecting the bank accounts of an institution that covered up pedophilia around the world and more concerned with bringing justice to the abused it failed to protect for so long.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com