Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
A smile and an admonition
Pope Francis arrives Friday for an audience with Vatican employees on the Vatican grounds. In his earlier Christmas address to the bureaucracy that runs the Holy See, Francis called on clerics who have sexually abused minors to turn themselves over to civil authorities “and prepare for divine justice.”
ROME — Pope Francis on Friday called on clerics who sexually abuse minors to hand themselves over to civil authorities and prepare their souls for eternal judgment, saying that the Vatican would remove the priests who prey on their flock and endanger the credibility of the church.
The pope’s remarks came in his traditional Christmas address to the bureaucracy that runs the Holy See, a speech that has become an annual excoriation of the careerism, sins and corruption that he says have infected the Catholic hierarchy.
“To those who abuse minors, I would say this: Convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis told the Roman curia, with cardinals in black cassocks and red skullcaps gathered around him in the frescoed Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
He denounced clerics “who abuse the vulnerable, taking advantage of their position and their power of persuasion,” adding: “They perform abominable acts yet continue to exercise their ministry as if nothing had happened. They have no fear of God or his judgment, but only of being found out and unmasked.” In doing so, he said, these priests rip apart the priesthood, besmirch their innocent brothers and discredit the Roman Catholic Church, which has been “buffeted by strong winds and tempests” this year.
“Often behind their boundless amiability, impeccable activity and angelic faces, they shamelessly conceal a vicious wolf ready to devour innocent souls,” he said.
The sexual-abuse crisis has continued to expand throughout the church. New reports and grand jury investigations from multiple continents have detailed how abuse has ruined the lives of young victims and their families for decades. The crisis has also badly damaged the church’s standing and imperiled the papacy of Francis, who turned 82 this week.
Francis reacted to the issue this year amid the backlash to his stated faith in Chilean bishops over the “slander” of abuse survivors. He ultimately dispatched investigators and accepted the resignations of some Chilean bishops. In the United States, where the crisis has exploded in the past few months, he has also accepted the resignations of prelates, though sometimes reluctantly.
But even as the pope has spoken out in increasingly forceful tones against abuse, victims and their supporters contend that he has taken little concrete action to solve the problem. They took Friday’s speech as more evidence that the pope needed a reality check when it came to sex abuse.
“At a moment that cries out for visionary leadership and radical change, the pope is indulging in make-believe and misdirection,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, a co-director of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks clergy sex abuse cases.
“In commanding child molesters to turn themselves in, Francis is pretending,” she said. “He’s pretending that sick men can suddenly see the light. He’s pretending we don’t remember it was the Vatican that has blocked the few efforts by bishops’ conferences to mandate reporting to law enforcement. He’s pretending the problem lies with perpetrator priests and some ignorant bishops of the past rather than with ongoing secrecy modeled by the Vatican itself.”
Critics also argue that the pope’s emphasis on a response originating from local bishops is misplaced, citing long-standing patterns of abuse and cover-ups by many of those same bishops. Only a centralized, explicit zero-tolerance order from the Vatican will carry weight around the globe, they say.
The Vatican has raised expectations that a meeting in February would result in tangible changes and not just more tough talk. The pope has summoned the presidents of bishops’ conferences around the world to address the abuse issue.
“Let it be clear that before these abominations the church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes,” Francis said Friday. “The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case.”
He acknowledged, once again, past failures to recognize and address abuse, and said “that must never happen again.” This week, the pope accepted the resignation of a bishop in Los Angeles facing abuse allegations, but a priest in New York, whose victims have been compensated by the New York archdiocese for substantiated claims of abuse, continued to preach days before Christmas.