UNITED STATES
Philadelphia Daily News
Ronnie Polaneczky, Daily News Columnist
Posted: Thursday, March 14, 2013
I’D FEEL MORE hopeful about newly elected Pope Francis if some of the cardinals who elected him Wednesday had excused themselves from voting.
The new pope must reckon with the ongoing fallout of the worldwide sex-abuse scandal that has shaken the Roman Catholic Church to its core. Although priests have been convicted of molesting innocents, no cardinal has even been defrocked for his part in covering up the perversions that have devastated generations of families.
What’s the likelihood that these self-interested cardinals would vote for a pontiff who might remove them from the church?
I’m thinking about men like retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony.
For years, Mahony did all he could to keep law-enforcement officials from investigating priests who’d molested kids. In January, newly released church records so damned Mahony that his successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez, forbade him from participating in public ministry again.
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