John Patrick Grace: Summit on Clerical Sexual Abuse Falls Short

By John Patrick Grace
Herald Dispatch
March 5, 2019

https://www.herald-dispatch.com/opinion/john-patrick-grace-summit-on-clerical-sexual-abuse-falls-short/article_0538057a-e0bf-553f-8951-0c953d8e5c1e.html

Full disclosure: I have been a longtime fan of Pope Francis. The first pope from Latin America, the first pope who is a Jesuit, and yet, curiously, someone who took his papal name from St. Francis of Assisi, the barefoot troubadour who founded the Franciscan order in the hills of Umbria.

The images are endearing: Francis asking the throng at St. Peter's Square to "pray for me" before he delivered from the balcony his first discourse as pope. Francis hefting his own luggage from his hotel room as a limousine waited below to ferry him to his new quarters in the Vatican. And Francis riding around Rome in a modest black sedan, an ordinary car, not a limo, sometimes right in the front passenger seat next to the driver.

I have had the personal privilege of meeting two popes: Pope John XXIII, while I was spending my college junior year abroad in Rome, and Pope Paul VI, whom I covered as a journalist working for The Associated Press. I see in Francis personality pieces that remind me of John XXIII, "the peasant pope from Bergamo." Humility, plain and simple.

Thus I had sky-high hopes for the recent summit of 100 bishops convoked to the Vatican by Pope Francis to debate the worldwide clerical sexual abuse scandals that have ravaged Catholic communities.

I'd told more than one friend that Francis "would do more than Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI combined" to cleanse the church from the stench of thousands of cases of priests, and sometimes even bishops, committing acts of predatory sexual abuse on minors, predominantly young male children.

Serious — not partisan left or right types — Catholic commentators who followed the summit between Francis and the bishops have, however, scored the event as "a letdown" that fell far short of expectations, especially those of survivors of clerical sexual abuse. Two of these commentators are veteran Vatican watcher John Allen, who writes for a variety of Catholic media outlets, and Monsignor Charles Pope, a regular columnist for the weekly Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.

Allen credited Francis for issuing a heartfelt call for the church to heed "the silent, choked cry" of abuse victims, and for his remark that "in people's justified anger, the Church sees the reflection of the wrath of God."

The American journalist then went negative, quoting Bishop Accountability, a watchdog group, as suggesting that Pope Francis' final remarks at the summit did not indicate the hoped-for zero-tolerance crackdown on offending clerics and bishops.

Nonetheless, the Vatican vowed to issue a new anti-abuse guideline book for bishops, conferences and dioceses, and follow up with other gatherings to take stock of progress, Allen allowed.

Msgr. Pope, who also had entertained high hopes for the summit, said, "Count me among those who are disappointed in the content and conclusions" of the Vatican conference on abuse.

Msgr. Pope said the summit failed to focus on abuse cases beyond those involving minors. The church, he said, must also "address the sexual abuse of vulnerable or subordinate adults."

In addition, the monsignor, who is American, faulted the summit for not following up on a link between homosexuality and sexual abuse by priests and some bishops. A study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, carried out by the secular John Jay Institute, has reported that 86 percent of cases of clerical sexual abuse in the United States involved homosexually inclined priests.

We clearly have a long road ahead before the church regains "higher ground."