VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register
JUDY ROBERTS
VATICAN CITY — In a media narrative that was largely predictable, news of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation was quickly followed by a flood of headlines linking him to the clergy sexual-abuse scandal.
“Legacy Marred by Sex-Abuse Scandal,” read a headline on the ABC News website. “Complicit in Child Sex-Abuse Scandals,” said another from The Guardian, which quoted victims’ groups.
Amid the fray, however, other voices have taken a singularly opposite view, instead crediting the Holy Father with aggressively and decisively addressing a problem that came to light well before he was elected to the papacy.
In part because of high-profile cases like those in Ireland and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the United States, and the one involving Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, Benedict’s pontificate could not escape association with the stigma of clergy sexual abuse. However, his supporters insist that the way in which he dealt with the crisis was both exemplary and exceptional and that history will be much kinder to him than his critics have been.
Those who defend Pope Benedict’s treatment of the Church’s sexual-abuse scandal cite his multiple meetings with victims, the first by a pope; his strongly worded statements and apologies, in particular his eight-page “Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland” in which he criticized not just the perpetrators, but bishops who had mishandled the situation; his work as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and, later, as pope in improving the way sexual-abuse cases were handled by the Vatican and his swift, direct action in the case of Father Maciel.
“Pope Benedict XVI will certainly be remembered for his extraordinary reply and response to the very sad phenomenon of sexual abuse of minors by the clergy,” auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, former promoter of justice for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told Vatican Radio Feb. 18.
The promoter of justice is responsible for investigating more serious crimes, including claims of clergy sexual abuse of minors. After Bishop Scicluna was elevated last year to the episcopate and returned to his native Malta, he was succeeded as promoter of justice by Father Robert Oliver, a canon-law expert from the Archdiocese of Boston.
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