KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
August 9, 2019
By Michael Sean Winters
The Holy Father was true to his name last weekend when he published a fatherly letter to priests on the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney. The letter was remarkable in many ways, a most exemplary text in understanding how Pope Francis brings our tradition alive and uses it to face the challenges and opportunities of our day. I should like to highlight some elements that seem to me to be quintessential Papa Bergoglio.
First, there is his brutal frankness. He begins by addressing the clergy sex abuse and its effects on the presbyterate. “As you know, we are firmly committed to carrying out the reforms needed to encourage from the outset a culture of pastoral care, so that the culture of abuse will have no room to develop, much less continue,” he writes. “This task is neither quick nor easy: it demands commitment on the part of all. If in the past, omission may itself have been a kind of response, today we desire conversion, transparency, sincerity and solidarity with victims to become our concrete way of moving forward. This in turn will help make us all the more attentive to every form of human suffering.”
The direct acknowledgement of both the scourge and the challenges they face is followed by a deeply spiritual insight: Accompanying the victims of abuse will “make us all the more attentive to every form of human suffering.”
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