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Discussions That Should Be Placed Side by Side: Abuse Survivors Want Juan Barros Removed as Bishop of Osorno, San Francisco Catholics Want Salvatore Cordileone Removed as Archbishop of San Francisco
William D. Lindsey
Two items I’ve read this morning strike me as a revealing synchronistic fit for one another. The first is Kristine Ward’s editorial in today’s edition of NSAC (National Survivor Advocates Coalition) News.*Kristi is commenting on the recent meeting of Marie Collins, Peter Saunders, and other members of the pope’s abuse advisory commission with Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the pope’s “fixer.” She notes that NSAC members “are appalled that they [the lay members of the abuse advisory commission] are the people who had to initiate the action to speak with the commission chair, Cardinal Sean O’Malley and through him seek to get the attention of Pope Francis.”
The members of the abuse advisory commission wanted to discuss with Pope Francis, of course, his choice to make Juan Barros (and here, here, and here), who has been accused of helping shield a fellow priest abusing minors, in bishop of Osorno, Chile. As Kristi’s editorial notes, it’s obvious that, despite widespread outrage at this appointment both in the diocese itself and in many quarters of the Catholic church, notably among survivors, “it borders on the near impossible that Bishop Barros’ appointment will be rescinded.”
This is true in part, she suggests, because the involvement of the influential and powerful Cardinal Angelo Sodano in the story of Barros’s appointment cannot be discounted. As she points out, Cardinal O’Malley knows this perfectly well.
And so enter O’Malley “the fixer,” through whom members of the papal abuse advisory commission have had to go to approach the pope himself: the NSAC News editorial sums O’Malley and his role vis-a-vis the abuse commission members’ concerns in the following way:
He has finely honed the skill of the appearance of action and empathy.
If you enjoy theater, Cardinal O’Malley’s performance that builds yet another protective tent for hierarchs while continuing to disguise him as a champion of reform is stellar.
Kristi explains what she means with these remarks suggesting that O’Malley has been disguised in a theatrical way as the champion of reform while he’s actually helping to build a protective tent for hierarchs, by noting that the outcome of O’Malley’s meeting with Pope Francis to relay to him the concerns of abuse survivors about Barros’s appointment was the following: Vatican press spokesman Father Federico Lombardi then announced that a “precise and reliable legal text” will be assessed, detailing the duties and responsibilities of bishops and religious superiors vis-a-vis priests abusing minors— something that, as she notes, O’Malley had already discussed at a recent meeting of the pope’s kitchen cabinet, the Council of Nine.
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