UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
1. Pope Francis is evidently a “hands on” Jesuit pope. He appears to expect obedience and loyalty from all, as Cardinal Burke seems to have recently learned painfully. But Francis, now in his 79th year, is only one man and an old one at that. He needs assistance from “independent doers”, not just “loyal followers”. Very disappointingly, he has now bypassed Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P., as described more below, the world’s top expert on the Catholic priest child abuse scandal. Fr. Doyle has been omitted from Francis’ endlessly evolving but rarely meeting “cherry picked” anti-abuse commission panel. This is despite Doyle’s public request for inclusion and their shared and significant history with Cardinal Pio Laghi decades ago.
2. This, in my view, will likely turn out to be a huge papal mistake. Pope Francis should have known by now that, in order to clean up the continuing child abuse mess and to regain worldwide Catholics’ rapidly diminishing trust, he urgently needs commission members who have clearly proven to be BOTH professionally experienced AND independently courageous, like Tom Doyle has. He is a rare combination in my view after decades practicing as an international lawyer.
3. Francis’ overlooking of Doyle sends a very bad signal about Pope Francis’ real intentions with the long delayed commission. The commission is now scheduled to meet together for an “all hands” organizational meeting in February, likely to be orchestrated by Fr. Robert Oliver, the commission’s chief of staff and the Vatican’s former top prosecutor. Oliver reportedly initially learned the ropes on the priest child abuse scandal under Boston’s infamous Cardinal Law, hardly a positive reference. Law, like Oliver, is in Rome, while the purported commission head, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, is in Boston and likes to communicate with the Vatican by fax!
4. In 2006, the Boston Globe reported that O’Malley indicated that administrative management is not his forte. Bishop Accountability has reported well on O’Malley’s and Oliver’s earlier shortcomings on addressing some suspected Boston priest abusers. This slow moving commission certainly made O’Malley’s limited management skills quite evident. Oliver and O’Malley will be assisted in the US by the sole US member, a former New Zealander who has worked for O’Malley in three dioceses. She also stood up for O’Malley in the same 2006 Boston Globe article about O’Malley’s poor handling of the termination of an alleged sexual harassing hospital executive.
5. So there you appear to have it. Pope Francis’ key team to clean up the scandal, at least in Boston, in the place where it first exploded a dozen years ago, is a old Boston team, perhaps with even occasional whispered advice from Cardinal Law in Rome. Amazing, just amazing! Is Pope Francis really serious?
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