CHARLOTTE (NC)
WFAE Radio
May 20, 2019
By Tommy Tomlinson
The Catholic Diocese of Charlotte is crawling into the 21st century. They should get some credit for finally moving forward. But they should also understand that there’s a long way to go.
For years – for decades – the diocese refused to name its clergy members who had been accused of sexually abusing children. But now the diocese plans to publish a list of those clergy by the end of the year.
That’s probably because some of those names have started coming out anyway. In February, the diocese in Richmond published its own list that included two Benedictine monks who had worked in the Charlotte area. One had been accused of sexual abuse at a Gastonia parish in the 1970s. And both had worked at Belmont Abbey College.
Then in March, the second-in-command of the Charlotte diocese resigned. He was facing allegations of sexual misconduct toward an adult student at Belmont Abbey in the 1980s.
All of this belongs in the bigger context of the gut-wrenching global scandal involving Catholic priests and sexual abuse. The church knew for decades that thousands of its priests had been credibly accused of abusing members of their flocks, often children. The vast majority of the cases never became public – instead, a priest might just disappear from a parish one day, only to surface in another one two or three states away.
Pope Francis recently announced a new church law on sexual abuse. Priests and nuns around the world are now required to report all cases they know about to church authorities — even ones that happened long ago.
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