VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
DavidClohessy.com [St. Louis MO]
April 21, 2025
By David Clohessy
On other matters – like church governance, finances and morale – he took prompt and impressive action. On the church’s continuing child sex abuse and cover up crisis, he did not.
Like his two most recent predecessors, while making vague but comforting promises, Francis
- acknowledged the scandal but only in the most vague and often self-serving terms, focusing only on the priests who committed crimes, not bishops who enabled their crimes
- met with a carefully-chosen handful of victims and apologized, again, in vague, often self-serving terms
- used the familiar but largely spurious public relations maneuver of fixating on largely ineffective procedures, protocols, policies and panels, and
- refused, time and time again, to take simple, proven, common sense steps to protect the vulnerable, oust the predators, punish the enablers and expose the cover ups.
Once caught or exposed, a few more bad bishops quietly resigned under this Frances than under his predecessors. But as popes have done for centuries, Francis refused to even openly denounce complicit clerics, much less deter future complicity by punishing them.
Sadly, he stubbornly refused to defrock, demote or discipline, in any clear or meaningful way, bishops who moved predators, deceived parishioners, stonewalled police, stiff-armed prosecutors, hid evidence and endangered children. That refusal is inexcusably irresponsible.
His genial personality and warm demeanor distracted many from the unhealthy and still essentially unaddressed structural and cultural flaws in the church that cause kids to keep being hurt and this crisis to continue.
David G. Clohessy
Former national director of SNAP
Current volunteer director of Missouri SNAP
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
Prevent Abuse LLC
7234 Arsenal St., St. Louis MO 63143
314-566-9790 (cell)
twitter: @davidgclohessy