PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change
June 4, 2012 by Susan Matthews
Pope Benedict announced Sunday that Philadelphia will host the World Family Meeting in 2015. This could be viewed as a positive sign of support to Philadelphia during troubled times. Despite often being characterized as relentlessly optimistic, I’m not ready to call this a positive.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning group Amnesty International cited the Vatican in its 2011 annual report for human rights violations because of the clergy sex abuse crisis in Ireland. Since then, the Vatican has done little to address this incredible failure in any part of the world. Instead, the news from Rome is “the butler did it” and that nuns are spending too much time on the poor.
While the papal visit in 1979 was an incredible spiritual event, this one will ring hollow if the recommendations of the 2011 Grand Jury report are still not met years later in 2015. If our children are still under-protected, there is nothing to celebrate.
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