SOUTH AFRICA
Sunday Independent
June 1 2014
By Pinky Khoabane
Will Pope Francis now step up to the plate and decisively deal with the issue of the clergy’s sexual abuse, asks Pinky Khoabane.
As Pope Francis prepares to meet victims of sexual abuse by clergy, will he concede that the notion of abstinence has failed, and even more importantly, demand that priests facing accusations of sexual abuse be handed over to the law?
During a flight from Jerusalem last week, Francis announced he would be meeting with sexual abuse victims at the Vatican and declared the act of priests’ molestation of children equivalent to “a satanic mass”.
This meeting would be the first of this sort since the pope’s election in March last year.
Francis is quoted as saying “sexual abuse is such an ugly crime… because a priest who does this betrays the body of the Lord. It is like a satanic mass”.
Enough already!
By now victims and whistle-blowers of the Roman Catholic’s sexual scandals – details of which have exploded in the last 15 years or so – could do with more action and less of the emotive descriptions of what are plain unlawful acts which ought to be handed to law enforcement for prosecution.
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