UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
As I listen to Leonardo Boff predict a new springtime in the Catholic church due to Pope Francis (see here and here), I don’t want to take my eyes off what has happened up to now with the new pope vis-à-vis the biggest crisis the church has faced since the Reformation. This is the crisis provoked by sexual abuse of minors by Catholic religious authority figures.
What has happened with Francis so far on this front is, lamentably, almost nothing at all. As Anne Barrett Doyle and Terence McKiernan recently wrote for Bishop Accountability,
He [Francis] has expressed solidarity with nearly every vulnerable population except for those who were sexually abused within the church.
In a recent article noting Francis’s lack of substantial action on the issue of sexual abuse, veteran Vatican watcher John Allen cites Barbara Dorris, SNAP leader, who says,
Like all of his predecessors, Pope Francis is acting belatedly, secretively and recklessly [i.e., in addressing cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests].
As Allen adds,
In other words, some critics charge that the “Francis revolution” — generally understood to mean a more transparent, accountable and compassionate church — has not yet arrived vis-à-vis the abuse crisis.
In a recent posting at his Christian Catholicism site, Jerry Slevin notes that at the very same time Allen published his National Catholic Reporter article about Francis and the abuse crisis, the council of eight cardinals selected to advise Francis on reforming the church ended its meeting in Rome without having said a thing about the abuse crisis–and with convicted criminal Bishop Robert Finn still holding his episcopal seat in Kansas City. At the same time, as Jerry also points out, President Obama praised the new pope, while news broke that Father Kevin McDonough, brother of Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, may have been involved in covering up abuse cases in the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese. Kevin McDonough was vicar general of the archdiocese prior to Msgr. Peter Laird, who has just resigned that position after his role in covering up abuse cases became known.
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