UNITED STATES
Christian Post
By Leonardo Blair, CP Contributor
March 20, 2013
While American Catholics are mostly satisfied with the selection of Argentina’s former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as the new pope to lead the Catholic Church’s 1.2 billion adherents, they now want him to make addressing sex abuse scandals in the church his top priority.
Results of a national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and published in The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life on Tuesday, show seven-in-ten American Catholics ranking addressing sex abuse scandals the highest from a list of possible priorities for Pope Francis.
The other possible priorities on the list were standing up for traditional moral values, spreading the Catholic faith, addressing priest shortage and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy. Only 49 percent of Catholics overall said standing up for traditional moral values should be a top priority for Pope Francis. Approximately 40 percent selected spreading the Catholic faith, 36 percent chose addressing the priest shortage while 35 percent felt reforming the Vatican bureaucracy should be top priorities for the new pope.
The poll, which was conducted March 13-17 among 1,501 adults including 325 Catholics, also highlighted that while many Catholics would like the church to make changes to some of the teachings and policies on issues like birth control and marriage, fewer of them expect it to happen.
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