Cincinnati archbishop ‘stunned’ by Vatican delay request
Vatican: Pope to seek a ‘global solution’ on sex abuse in February.
The leader of southwest Ohio’s half-million Roman Catholics said the Vatican’s request last week to delay a planned vote of U.S. bishops on sexual abuse reform and new accountability measures was an “enormous disappointment.”
In a letter sent to priests and deacons this week, then released to the Dayton Daily News by his spokesman, Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said “the Catholic bishops of the United States are acutely aware of the anger and frustration of all the faithful; thus, the request to not proceed as planned stunned all of us.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops planned to vote at its fall assembly last week on proposals aimed at “the pressing issue of bishop accountability.”
The action was in response to the revelation earlier this year an allegation of sexual abuse was substantiated by the Archdiocese of New York against ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and the revelations this summer in a Pennsylvania grand jury report that more than 300 priests collectively abused more than 1,000 children over decades.
“We planned to debate and vote on specific measures which the Executive Committee, of which I am a member, had worked diligently to prepare in the weeks leading up to the Assembly,” Schnurr wrote. “At the last minute, the Holy See asked us to not vote on these measures, but rather wait for the February meeting that Pope Francis has called to seek a global solution to this issue.”
“Naturally, our initial reaction was enormous disappointment,” Schnurr wrote.
The archbishop’s letter is an unusually direct critique of the Holy See, the seat of the worldwide Catholic church’s central