INDIA
Hindustan Times
Paramita Ghosh, Hindustan Times, New Delhi | Updated: Mar 01, 2016
For Roman Catholics, February has not been a good month to be Christian. Pictures of one of its latest saints, the much-revered Pope John Paul II, surfaced, showing the late pope in the company of a married woman; one photograph is of them skiing. An exchange of letters also came to light that suggested a relationship of ‘more-than-friends-and-less-than-lovers’.
March, the month that did Macbeth in, seems to be no better. The 2016 Oscars, in which the journalism drama Spotlight won Best Picture , brought focus back on sex abuse by priests, a reality that intermittently stalks the Catholic Church and undermines the institution – mainly for its culture of cover-up.
Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston attorney for many victims who is also portrayed in Spotlight, said the film restored to survivors the “lost dignity that was stolen by clergy sexual abuse”.
Paedophilia and other instances of sexual coercion have blown up in the face of the church at a time when it is being forced to re-think many of its rigid controls. Some priests are demanding the right to marry while women are demanding the right to be priests. Celibacy, some say, is the Reformation moment of the Catholic church in this century. It is certainly a big challenge.
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