DENVER (CO)
Crux
August 25, 2019
By John L. Allen Jr.
Rome – Back in long-ago 1998, I spoke to a member of a small conservative Catholic watchdog group in the U.S. that had just publicly accused a prominent local priest of sexual abuse. I asked why all the churchmen this group targeted seemed to be liberals, and the answer was unhesitating: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
What he meant is that if a cleric is doctrinally and politically suspect, at least in this group’s eyes, then there’s likely moral corruption too.
In other words, what one might call the “weaponization” of clerical sexual abuse charges as part of the wars of culture in Catholicism is nothing new. Decisions to lodge such charges or to make them public, as well as whether people are inclined to believe or reject them, often are tied up with politics, try as reasonable souls might to remain objective.
This comes to mind in light of a recent controversy surrounding Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the “substitute,” or number three official, in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. He was appointed to that role by Pope Francis last year, and it’s a key one – the substitute, who’s responsible for the Vatican’s daily workflow, is the only person, including the Cardinal Secretary of State, who can simply walk in on the pope unannounced.
When Peña Parra was appointed a year ago, the Italian newsmagazine L’Espresso published a letter suggesting negative reports about him as a seminarian in Venezuela, but they mostly concerned his sexual orientation and didn’t clearly suggest abuse.
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