ROME
The Revealer
Who’s going to be the next pope? We know, more or less, who the cardinals are most likely to pick once the conclave gets rolling tomorrow. But there’s another question that should be asked as we watch the Vatican for white smoke: who do lay Catholics and victims of sexual abuse by the church want for pope?
There’s more than one way to dissect a papal election process of course, but as the sex abuse scandal still rightly casts a deep shadow over the church, there are two ways the new pope might try to “fix” the church: with a revised papal media presence, and with systematic reform in church leadership. According to at least some advocates, the cardinals are paying way too much attention to the former, and sweeping reform under the rug.
An advocacy group for survivors of sexual abuse named their “Dirty Dozen” of leading contenders last week. The list of papabiles names cardinals deemed unfit for the job because of their ties to the sex abuse scandal and has a fair amount of overlap with others in circulation, including one I compiled this week for Slate.
SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)’s executive director, David Clohessy, told me via email that some of the cardinals on the list might surprise Catholics, as they’re widely promoted as “reformers” in the church. Take, for example, Cardinal O’Malley of the United States, who has listed addressing the abuse scandal among his priorities for the next pope. But O’Malley, who is considered a “reformer” on the issue by some (including some survivors) for his “zero tolerance” stance towards child abuse in the Catholic church, has also shown “stunning” leniency toward some abusers under his watch. Many extant examples of church “reform” don’t actually address the problem, SNAP says. Clohessy says that the abuse within the church has gone on for centuries, adding, “It’s going on now. And it won’t be reversed in a few years. Because of this, SNAP advocates for victims to report abuse to “secular” authorities, indicating their lack of faith in the church’s current ability to address abuse cases internally.
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