ROME
The Daily Beast
November 12, 2018
By Barbie Latza Nadeau
At a moment when optics matter most, Francis pulled the plug on U.S. bishops as they met to do something measurable on clerical sex abuse—and precisely as new allegations emerged.
There has perhaps never been a more critical moment in the history of the American Catholic Church to appear to be doing the right thing on clerical child sex abuse than this week as their leadership meets in Baltimore.
But in the hours before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, or USCCB, representing some 196 dioceses, gathered Monday morning, word came down from Rome that Pope Francis didn’t want the Americans to vote on two important items on their agenda—essentially ordering them to halt their vital work on reforms.
Instead, he wants any vote by individual national churches to take place after a Feb. 21-24, 2019, summit in Rome, where the global leaders of the church will be focused on its worldwide response to abuse.
But it means that this U.S. meeting, which was supposed to herald a change of course, is now just another meeting in which nothing concrete is accomplished.
Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of Bishops Accountability, a website that lists all cases of misconduct and coverups by clergy, called the Vatican’s move “truly incredible.”
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