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July 8, 2014 by Priyanka Boghani
Yesterday, Pope Francis met for the first time in his papacy with victims who suffered childhood sexual abuse at the hands of clergy members. In a sermon at a private mass for the victims, the pope used “some of his most emotional language yet,” speaking “like a sinner in confession,” wrote Jason Berry, religion writer at GlobalPost and author of Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church.
FRONTLINE spoke with Berry this afternoon to find out more about Francis’s meeting with the victims, what his record in Argentina suggests about his current intentions, and the prospects for his efforts to reform the Vatican.
Berry coproduced Secrets of the Vatican, FRONTLINE’s inside look at the recent scandals that have rocked the church. The film rebroadcasts tonight on many PBS stations (check local listings).
What was different about what Pope Francis did yesterday?
First, Pope Francis spent a great deal of time, according to the press reports, with each of the individuals. The young woman who spoke to the Irish newspapers said he was unhurried, he didn’t look at his watch, and sat with her at length and listened to her. This was different from the approach that Pope Benedict took, with shorter meetings, and not as involved in gathering the emotional weight of each one of their accounts. I don’t mean that as a criticism of the former pope, but Francis decided to go more than the extra mile in spending time with them.
The second point is, his language struck me as quite a reflection of guilt on his part on behalf of the hierarchy of the church. He begged for forgiveness rather like a sinner going to confession. What’s significant there is that when someone in his position establishes a terrain of language, a territorial vocabulary, for discussing something that’s as aching and reaching as this scandal that has been building for years, it creates a kind of arena for ongoing exchanges.
Even though some of the survivors’ groups are attacking him, he’s actually done them a favor by speaking as bluntly as he did. The challenge for the pope and for the Vatican now is how they create the structural changes to meet the promise of the rhetoric.
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