MEXICO CITY (MEXICO)
Crux
Nov. 7, 2019
By Inés San Martín
A Mexican archbishop has said it’s time for prelates to own up to the mistakes they’ve made handling clerical sexual abuse cases, including what he euphemistically called the “geographical solution” of simply moving predators from one assignment to another without addressing their behavor.
“We bishops need to acknowledge the mistakes of the past: we weren’t conscious of the seriousness of the issue, and the solutions we gave weren’t the right ones,” said Archbishop Rogelio Cabrera, of Monterrey, president of the Mexican bishops’ conference and treasurer of the Latin American Conference of Bishops (CELAM).
“The geographic solution of thinking that the [problem] is solved by moving the criminal from one place to another made everything worse, because the problem spread,” Cabrera said.
Every bishop who’s been a bishop for more than 10 years, he said, “has to confess that our solutions were not the best.”
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