BishopAccountability.org
	New Pope Must Address Priest Sex Abuse Crisis By Eileen P. Flynn Asbury Park Press [Asbury Park NJ] April 28, 2005 Pope Benedict XVI continues to make news. When he held his first meeting with members of the media Saturday, he spoke for about 15 minutes, making general comments about the good the media can do in providing information. The pope also reminded the media that they should observe the ethical requirements of their profession. I was disappointed that the pope did not invite questions. If I had been there and been able to ask questions, I would have asked him about sexual abuse by priests. Although in the past year or two, members of the Catholic hierarchy have tried to assure American Catholics that the sex abuse crisis is "history," until significant aspects of that crisis are resolved it will continue to undermine the credibility of the Church. When the College of Cardinals elected Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the office of supreme pontiff, they chose a person who has a mixed record in addressing the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests. Pope Benedict XVI needs to apologize for the wrong things he said and the poor policies he implemented before his pontificate will be able to move forward. The biggest problem facing the new pope is that he is on record as having said in November 2002 that he thought that the media in the United States were spearheading a campaign against the Catholic Church. He said that he was "personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower. In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information or to the statistical objectivity of the facts. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the Church. It is a logical and well-founded conclusion." As everyone now knows, his conclusion was neither well founded nor logical because his facts were way off. The John Jay study of priest sex abuse of minors in the United States documented that there were more than 10,000 credible allegations against more than 4,000 priests between 1950 and 2002. That means that more than 4 percent of American priests were charged with sexual abuse. Pope Benedict XVI needs to tell us how he could have been in the dark and not known that priest molestation of minors was a major scandal. If cases of abuse in the United States were not known to him, there is a problem in the dissemination of information within the Vatican that needs to be resolved. In view of the fact that the Diocese of Newfoundland, Canada, went through a clergy sex abuse crisis, which was analyzed in the Winter Commission Report of 1990, I have a hard time understanding how the new pope could have bashed the media in the United States as he did. How was he able to suggest that the media was a problem while failing to rail against molesting priests? And why did some bishops, whose oversight of their dioceses represented the most egregious form of negligence, get a pass instead of a resounding reprimand and a demotion? For the past four years, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, over which the new pope as Cardinal Ratzinger presided as prefect, had responsibility for handling Church discipline of priests accused of abusing minors. As a result, his congregation learned the whereabouts of priests who left the United States and were sheltered in other dioceses or in religious houses, some of them in Rome. By fleeing, these accused priests evaded prosecution and they remained free to come and go. They may even continue to have access to children. The pope needs to disclose whether he countenanced the actions of accused priest molesters who fled to escape prosecution and needs to say what steps he will take to ensure that these priests are turned over to law enforcement authorities. Pope John Paul II took a long time before he made a decisive statement in 2002 about priests whose misconduct harms children. As the crisis reached its peak in the United States, John Paul finally stated, "People need to know that there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young." People tended to be compassionate to the late pope. In view of his failing health, we felt that it would be unkind to confront him about how much dysfunction we were seeing in the hierarchy of the Church. The patience we had with the last pontiff will not be transferred to his successor. Pope Benedict XVI will need to tell us how he could have been so out of touch as to say that the number of abusers in the priesthood is less than 1 percent. If he was not being honest and was engaging in damage control, he should admit his wrongdoing and ask to be forgiven. If he was unaware of the extent of the scandal and the horrors visited upon innocent children, then the new pope needs to level with us about his reaction to what he learned and his feelings about the wrongdoing of bishops who reassigned multiple abusers. As far as accused priests relocating to evade punishment, the pope needs to extend zero tolerance to apply to this abuse. Finally, Pope Benedict XVI needs to tell us what steps he is going to take to make bishops accountable and recruit priests whose psychosexual maturity makes them unlikely to act out sexually with minors. ______________________________________________________________________________________ Eileen P. Flynn, Beach Haven, is a professor at St. Peter's College, Jersey City. She is the author of 13 books, including "Catholics at a Crossroads: Coverup, Crisis and Cure and Catholicism: Agenda for Renewal."