UNITED STATES
Crux
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor February 22, 2016
By virtually any standard, Pope Francis’ recent trip to Mexico, which began with a brief stop in Cuba to meet the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, was a triumph. Large crowds showed up everywhere he went, and the visit drew saturation coverage, especially with the pontiff’s dust-up at the end with Donald Trump.
Certainly if you were an undocumented immigrant on the US side of the border, or a prisoner or worker or victim of drug violence or an indigenous person inside Mexico, you have special reason to feel good about the pope’s presence, since he made a point of reaching out to these groups.
On the other hand, any papal trip is by definition an exercise in choice, and there are always others on the outside looking in – groups which, for one reason or another, feel neglected, or unheard, or disappointed in whatever the pope said or did. …
Abuse survivors
During the Pope Benedict XVI years, it became a standard feature of papal travel that when the pope visited a country that had been hard-hit by clerical abuse scandals, he would meet with victims. That was seen not only as an important gesture of sensitivity, but also a way of encouraging local bishops to do likewise.
On that score, Mexico certainly qualifies. It’s the birthplace of the Legion of Christ, a religious order launched in 1959 whose founder, the late Marcial Maciel Degollado, was found guilty by the Vatican in 2006 of various forms of sexual abuse and misconduct and sentenced to a life of “prayer and penance.”
In late December, a Mexican archbishop said that a meeting with victims and their families was in the works, but in the end, it never happened.
Such a meeting would have come at a good time for Francis. In recent weeks, the Vatican has faced controversy over its response to the abuse scandals on three different fronts:
* A survivor on the pope’s own anti-abuse commission was given a leave of absence after he was publicly critical of Francis for appointing a bishop in Chile known as an ally of that country’s most notorious abuser priest.
* A Vatican training session for new bishops came under fire for inviting a French monsignor who told the bishops they have no obligation to report abuse charges to police and failing to mention the Church’s extensive efforts in various parts of the world to develop cutting-edge abuse prevention programs.
* The pope’s top financial official, Cardinal George Pell, is facing a new round of allegations in Australia related to an ongoing probe by a Royal Commission into the Church’s handling of abuse cases.
Whatever Francis’ reasons for not meeting survivors in Mexico, it will add to the questions already being raised about where the Vatican, and the pope himself, presently stand in terms of the commitment to turning over a new leaf.
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