UNITED STATES
Commonweal
The Editors
April 28, 2015
n a March 2014 interview, Pope Francis was given an opportunity to comment on the sexual-abuse scandal, a subject he had said remarkably little about since his election. Acknowledging the “deep wounds” suffered by victims, Francis went on to defend the church as the only public institution to address such crimes “with transparency and responsibility.” No one else has done more, he continued, and yet “the church is the only one to be attacked.”
Those ill-advised remarks took many by surprise, coming as they did just a few months after Francis had announced a new Commission for the Protection of Minors and asked the world’s bishops to support its work. The commission, which includes two victims, wasted no time publicly stating its highest priority: accountability for negligent bishops. In November 2014, Cardinal Séan O’Malley—president of the commission—told 60 Minutes that the Holy See needed to “urgently address” one of the most painful cases to emerge in the U.S. church: Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, who was convicted of failing to report child abuse in 2012. Last month, following a Vatican investigation, Pope Francis removed him.
In December 2010—nearly a decade after the U.S. bishops pledged “zero tolerance” for abusive priests—Finn learned that Fr. Shawn Ratigan’s personal computer contained possibly pornographic photos of children. Five months after the photos were discovered, and without Finn’s knowledge, the vicar general turned the cleric in to the police. Ratigan, now laicized, is serving a fifty-year sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty to possessing and creating child pornography. (Federal sentencing law is especially hard on child pornographers.)
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