Pope removes scandal-hit cardinals
No longer on top advice body
Pope Francis has removed two prominent cardinals from his inner circle months after they were tainted by paedophile scandals and ahead of a church-wide meeting on the “protection of minors” in 2019.
Pope Francis has removed two prominent cardinals from his inner circle months after they were tainted by paedophile scandals and before a churchwide meeting on the “protection of minors” in 2019.
Australian cardinal George Pell and Chilean cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz had been removed from the C9 Council of Cardinals, the international advice body set up by Francis, the Vatican said on Wednesday.
In September, the last time that the C9 met, Errazuriz, who is accused of ignoring reports of abuse in Chile, and Pell, now facing charges in Australia related to historical child sexual offences, were both absent. The council said it was considering restructuring.
Despite being removed from the C9, Pell, 77, remains in charge of Vatican finances, the third most powerful position in the Catholic Church.
The church has been hit by child-abuse scandals in recent years, with widespread allegations of cover-ups, including against the pope. He clarified the composition of the C9 before a February meeting with leaders of bishops’ conferences around the world dealing with the “protection of minors”, to which victims of priestly sex abuse have been invited.
This meeting will also have to deal with some Asian and African bishops conferences that have said they are not concerned by the “western” abuse problem.
“February’s meeting can’t resolve all the problems, because there’s too much world diversity in the church,” said a source close to the pope.
“The American (US) episcopacy is panicking. They want to be as radical [against sexual abuse] as possible, while Africans don’t want any measures taken.
Another source said: “A code of silence has been our culture for too long, February’s meeting should mark a new beginning for bishops’ responsibility, or even for a new control system.”
Allegations in August from a conservative archbishop that the pope had ignored abuse suspicions concerning a prominent US cardinal have triggered an internal investigation into Vatican archives ordered by Pope Francis.
They also confirmed a rift in the church between some ultraconservative Catholics and a pope they see as a dangerous progressive interested in social issues to the detriment of church doctrine. The church was rocked in August by a devastating US report on child-sex abuse, which accused more than 300 “predator” priests of abusing more than 1,000 minors for longer than seven decades in Pennsylvania.
The commission set up by Francis has said that the fight against abuse must be a church priority and it also emphasised the importance of listening to victims.
While Pell faces prosecution in Australia, he is also up for renewal in February as the Vatican’s finance chief.
Francis has in the past preferred to accord the accused the presumption of innocence and has therefore not named anyone to replace Pell, despite a senior Vatican official saying this week that church expenses are rising “unacceptably”.
Errazuriz appears at the very least to have provided the pope with poor advice.
The pope’s ill-advised defence of a Chilean bishop accused of covering up for an old paedophile priest overshadowed his trip to the South American country in January and heaped embarrassment on the church.
Errazuriz, 85, met Francis in November and subsequently announced his “withdrawal” from the C9.
A third cardinal, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Laurent Monsengwo, will also no longer attend C9 meetings.
Monsengwo, 79, has for years played an important political and spiritual role in the wartorn nation, but he recently gave up his position as archbishop of Kinshasa.