ROME
Huffington Post
Deborah Jacobs
All eyes are on the Vatican as more than 100 cardinals from around the world gather this week to select a new pope. Their choice will reflect a collective sense of priorities for the Catholic Church, as much as it will the qualities of the man selected.
Top church officials, including the Archbishops of Washington and New York, have publicly listed their priority concerns for the next pontiff: secularism, religious persecution, Christianity in the cross hairs of “fanatics,” the institution of marriage, and meeting the growing financial needs of churches in developing countries.
Conspicuously absent from this list is the cancer of child sexual abuse. Nothing has cost the modern-day Catholic Church more followers, credibility and trust than its repeated decisions to sacrifice the safety of innocent children in deference to its own reputation. Church leaders have been disturbingly quiet about the new pope’s imperative to root out child sexual abuse within its institution and the vile cover-ups perpetrated by those in leadership.
After an initial round of media appearances by American cardinals in the lead-up to the conclave (including some who spoke more forthrightly about addressing child sex abuse), the Vatican pulled the plug on further press interviews and news conferences. Indeed, silence has been the Church’s long-standing practice for which sexual abuse victims continue to pay a devastatingly high price.
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