Don’t call on God to tackle abusers.. call in the police
THE Pope has used the special defence of incrimination for sexual abuse in the church, by blaming it on Satan.
This week, he told an extraordinary Vatican summit on the abuse crisis that offending priests were “the tools of Satan”, perpetrating “the work of the devil”.
So, victims demanding answers can basically go to hell.
Pope Francis said: “Consecrated persons, chosen by God to guide souls to salvation, let themselves be dominated by their human frailty or sickness and thus become tools of Satan.”
Over the years, God has chosen a frightening number of the morally “frail” to guide souls to salvation.
It would have been equally contemptuous had the Pope blamed Mr Nobody, rather than an entity with horns.
This was the supreme pontiff ’s pathetic explanation for an epidemic of heinous criminality in the most powerful religious institution on Earth.
Yesterday, the Pope’s adviser, Cardinal George Pell, was found guilty of sexual offences against children, making him the highest ranking Catholic figure to receive such a conviction.
Ten days earlier, Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal in the US, was defrocked over abuse claims – making him the most senior Catholic figure to be dismissed from the priesthood in modern times.
Pell was not only a rapist who abused two young choir boys, he also covered up a catalogue of other abuse by the clergy. Priests accused of assaulting children have, for decades, been spirited away until the dust settles, free to carry on abuse with impunity.
The four-day summit on preventing clergy sexual abuse was supposed to provide a concrete response to victims but they were left disappointed.
It was hailed as a potentially defining moment for the Pope and it was – in the worst of ways.
Earlier, Pope Francis had urged the 200 religious leaders to “listen to the cry of the little ones who are seeking justice”.
Then he shut his ears, opened his mouth and delivered hogwash, heavy on religious metaphor, light on specifics.
He suggested abusers be restrained by the “holy fear of God” or face “the wrath of God”.
The Pope needs to stop treating sexual abuse as a sin and tackle it as a crime. Don’t call on God, call in the police.
There was no papal diktat demanding alleged perpetrators be reported immediately to the authorities, the first step to a quantitative justice.
By not tackling the crisis head on, he has become an enabler, an accessory to institutionalised crime.
He had declared “an all-out war against the abuse of minors” but his real battle is with critics of the Catholic church and this summit was to be their pacifier.
The Pope has denounced critics as “the friends, cousins and relatives of the devil”, a dysfunctional family which includes the church’s victims.
Pope Francis said guidebooks would be given to bishops to help them deal with abuse but he didn’t insist they read them.
Then there was the task forces “of competent persons” to help church hierarchy who struggle with “initiatives for the protection of minors”.
What’s difficult about knowing what to do when a child is raped?
It’s not just children who have been abused by priests but women.
Nuns who have been raped, sexually assaulted and prostituted across the world are at last being heard after years of being silenced.
The church is failing consistently to clean up its holy house and task forces and guidebooks are meaningless.
We can but hope, as in the case of Pell and McCarrick, the justice system continues to succeed where the church continues to fail.