UNITED STATES
Roanoke Times
Posted: Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Roanoke Times Editorial Board
To his great credit, Pope Francis went beyond his predecessor’s apology and accepted personal responsibility last week for the Roman Catholic Church’s complicity in the sexual abuse of children by priests.
Francis also spoke of “the sanctions that must be imposed,” giving rise to speculation about what he might be prepared to do about it.
The pope’s unscripted remarks to a French Catholic children’s rights organization raise the question and hope that the church, at last, might have a leader who will not flinch from the extirpation of its institutional sin.
To do so requires calling to account those bishops and “princes of the church,” its cardinals, who protected pedophile priests – and, not incidentally, the church’s wealth – by keeping their crimes against children secret, sometimes justifying their silence as an effort to protect victims’ privacy.
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