WALTHAM (MA)
Bishop Accountability.org
By Terence McKiernan and Anne Barrett Doyle
[See also McKiernan’s statement on the interview.]
We are writing to express our concern regarding the interview with Pope Francis in Corriere della Sera and La Nacion, and to ask for your help in mitigating the interview’s effects. In his remarks, as you know, Pope Francis unfortunately represents the Church as the victim in the sexual abuse crisis, enduring attacks despite its “transparency” and “accountability,” which Francis characterizes as perhaps second to none. He personally praises Pope Benedict, while not even personally mentioning the victims of abuse, whose “cases” are terrible, Pope Francis says, and whose “statistics” are impressive.
The Holy Father’s impersonal treatment of the church’s own victims is sadly in keeping with his failure, during the first year of his pontificate, to act on the scourge of clergy abuse or meet with a single victim. The victims themselves cannot help but notice that Pope Francis has met with many people of all kinds, and has been praised for his humble and accessible ways. Is there something about the victims of sexual abuse by priests and religious that disqualifies them from the Holy Father’s kindness and regard?
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Judging from the Pope’s long silence and inaction regarding clergy abuse, and his words in Corriere della Sera yesterday, Pope Francis himself needs to be evangelized and radicalized by the survivors’ experience, and that process must clearly begin with you. Two roads diverge from this moment for Francis. Will he continue to demonize the media, ignore the victims, and triumphalize the changes that have been forced on the Church by survivors, investigative reporters, and secular investigations? Or will he seize the opportunity to see the survivors as the Church’s own poor and dispossessed – her particular responsibility?
Seizing the opportunity is not just about papal meetings with victims – a genre that you invented. We think you would agree that Pope Francis has the character and the skills to transform the scripted encounters of Benedict’s pontificate into something deeper and more productive. But Pope Francis also has the leadership skills and organizational gifts to transform the Vatican abuse bureaucracy. Placing the Commission under the CDF, if the Congregation continues to be led by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, is a decision taken to limit change and creativity. Müller is simply not the right man for the job. We feel strongly that you and Francis need someone like Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in Rome, if the CDF and the Commission are to be converted into a transparent and accountable force for children’s rights. And nothing less than such a transformation will extricate the Church from its dire circumstances – the endemic rape and torture of children by priests and religious, and the cover-up by your colleagues.
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