UNITED STATES
Spiritual Politics
By Mark Silk
Cardinal Sean O’Malley said last week that Pope Francis is committed to ending “the scourge of sex abuse.” Doth the cardinal protest too much?
I hope not. But things are not going well on the sex abuse front in Rome.
On March 1, abuse survivor Marie Collins resigned her position on the pope’s child protection commission, citing lack of cooperation from Vatican bureaucrats. The final straw, she said, was discovering that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which has responsibility for handling cases of child abuse by priests, has refused to respond to letters from survivors.
When the head of the CDF, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, sought to rebut Collins’ charges, she issued a humiliating point-by-point denunciation. The pope himself had approved the commission’s recommendation that the CDF respond to survivors’ letters.
Collins also pointed out that the CDF had declined papal instructions two years ago to establish a tribunal for disciplining bishops who have been negligent in handling abuse cases.
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