ROME (ITALY)
Crux
By Inés San Martín
November 9, 2018
To say the least, Father John Jenkins, President of the University of Notre Dame, doesn’t seem in denial about the gravity of the clerical sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in recent months.
After the Pennsylvania grand jury report was released in August, Jenkins said the revelations “are particularly searing to me and the other priests with me today, whose commitment can seem so tarnished, so soaked in filth, by those who so badly abused it.” He pledged the university “will do all we can to create a safe, nurturing environment everywhere.”
Yet befitting an Oxford-educated philosopher, Jenkins also sees complexity in the abuse crisis, including something few people want to say out loud right now: “There’s a tendency, and I don’t think it’s a helpful tendency in this kind of situation, to turn the perpetrators into monsters.”
Jenkins was speaking specifically about ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was forced to resign from the College of Cardinals in June following credible accusations of abuse.
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