UNITED STATES
Vox Media
September 19, 2018
By Tara Isabella Burton
Pope Francis’s favorability rating among Americans has plummeted sharply in the aftermath of this summer’s deluge of revelations in the Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis, according to a poll conducted by Gallup this week. Francis’s approval rating among Americans is down to 53 percent, according to the poll conducted from September 4 to 12.
In September 2015, according to Gallup, about 70 percent of Americans felt favorably about the pope. That number declined only slightly to 66 percent by early August.
But then a Pennsylvania grand jury report implicated hundreds of priests in the alleged sexual abuse of more than 1,000 minors, mostly during the 1970s and ’80s, prompting a new wave of abuse investigations across the United States. The fallout has rocked the Catholic Church — and Americans’ trust in the pope.
Even shortly before the massive report was released, retired DC archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick left the ministry after numerous allegations emerged of sexual abuse against both adult seminarians and minors. Weeks later, former Vatican official Carlo Maria Viganò wrote an open letter accusing Francis of overturning sanctions against McCarrick instituted by Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, despite being aware of McCarrick’s abuse of seminarians. The letter does not allege that Francis knew about any abuse of minors.
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