Phil Saviano Letter to Archbishop Scicluna

BishopAccountability.org
February 23, 2019

https://bit.ly/2Iw7Dxy

February 20, 2019

Dear Archbishop Scicluna, At your press conference on Monday, you spoke at length about the three themes of this week's summit: Responsibility, Accountability and Transparency. You made particular note of TRANSPARENCY, saying how important it is to "break the code of silence," and "confront the facts," no matter how painful or embarrassing the truth may be.

In my country, the United States, we’ve had two recent events that have shaken the trust of Catholics in their church. The revelations of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report that there have been at least 300 sexually abusive priests, with over 1,000 victims in six of eight dioceses in that one state, were quickly followed by news that one of the most visible, powerful and beloved Cardinals, Theodore McCarrick, was himself a sexual abuser.

The 2002 reporting of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team, in which I played an important role, left parishioners shocked and dismayed. But . . . with the formation of the highly publicized response from the American bishops, the Dallas Charter for the Protection of Minors, these parishioners were lulled into a sense of complacency, still trusting in the Vatican to do the right thing and get this problem under control.

With these recent revelations, however, these complacent Catholics are now feeling betrayed and angry. I know formerly faithful parishioners who are now pulling their children out of parochial schools, who are signing-up to be Episcopalians, who feel that they have wasted their lives being faithful to the Catholic church.

What you have here, Archbishop, is a cultural change, a "tipping point." People's faith and trust in the Vatican is rapidly washing away. To make matters worse, the bishops' ongoing inability to deal with the matters of child sexual abuse has, at long last, caught the attention of my country's top law enforcement officials. You saw the impact of the report on the state of Pennsylvania. Well, now you have 14 more attorneys general coming after you. The ship of Catholicism is going down! This would, indeed, be a good time to get real about transparency.

I am a survivor and a board member of the research organization called BishopAccountability. We are keepers of archives. We know all about church records. We believe in facts, and we believe that if the facts are fully known, the remedies will become clear. When we think of Vatican transparency, here is what comes to mind:

--In a 2014 hearing of the U.N. Committee Against Torture, the Holy See's Permanent Observer to the U.N., Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, said that in the ten previous years, 3,420 credible cases of abuse worldwide were reported to the CDF, where you were the Promoter of Justice in 2002-2012.

--In the United States alone, the church admits to 6,900 credibly accused priests reported since 1950.

Archbishop, if you as adjunct secretary of the CDF are calling for transparency in the hope that the angry Catholics may find a way back to their faith, then you will answer this question: Who are these men and where in the world are they today?

I call on the Vatican to release the guilty priests’ names and release their bishops’ vota, with full documentation for each of these criminals. Do it to launch your new era of transparency. Do it to break the code of silence. Do it out of respect for the victims of these men, and do it to help prevent these creeps from abusing any more children.

Please. Think this through, and just do it.

Phil Saviano Boston, MA USA