Pope: Catholics leaving over sex-abuse scandal
TALLINN, Estonia — Pope Francis conceded Tuesday that priestly sexual-abuse scandals are outraging the Catholic faithful and driving them away, and he said the church must change its ways if it wants to keep future generations.
Francis referred directly to the crisis convulsing his papacy on the fourth and final day of his Baltic pilgrimage, which coincided with the release of a devastating new report into decades of sexual abuse and cover-ups in Germany.
Estonia, a former Soviet republic, is considered one of the least-religious countries in the world; more than half of its 1.3 million people profess no religious affiliation. Estonia only has 6,000 Catholics; the Lutheran and Russian Orthodox churches count the most followers.
Francis told young people that he knows that many felt the church has nothing to offer them and doesn’t understand the problems of young adults.
“They are outraged by sexual and economic scandals that do not meet with clear condemnation, by our unpreparedness to really appreciate the lives and sensibilities of the young, and simply by the passive role we assign them,” he told Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox young people in the Kaarli Lutheran Church in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.
The pope said the Catholic Church wants to respond to those complaints transparently and honestly.
“We ourselves need to be converted,” he said. “We have to realize that, in order to stand by your side, we need to change many situations that, in the end, put you off.”
It was a public admission of the impact of the church’s failures in confronting sex-abuse scandals, which have roared back to the headlines recently. On Tuesday, the German bishops conference released a report that found that 3,677 people — more than half of them 13 or younger and nearly a third of them altar boys — were abused by clergy members between 1946 and 2014. The report, compiled by university researchers, found evidence that some files were manipulated or destroyed, many cases were not brought to justice, and abusers sometimes were moved to other dioceses without their new congregations being informed about their past.
Francis suggested that it was unfair to apply contemporary moral standards to the church’s past cover-up because cover-ups of such abuse were the standard outside the church as well.
“You also covered them up at home: When the uncle raped the niece, when the father raped his children. It was covered because it was so shameful,” he said.
He said he wasn’t excusing the church’s cover-up, which he said was evidence of the “corruption” that has so scandalized the faithful. But he said the church has made great strides in fighting abuse.
About 10,000 people attended the Mass.
“For me, it’s in my heart what I believe, and I think Francis is this kind of ‘papa’ who wants to change,” said Marko Tubli, a Tallinn resident. “A church is not like, ‘You must be this way and this way.’ It is more open.”
Francis also acknowledged Tuesday that his new landmark deal with China over the nomination of bishops will cause suffering among the underground faithful. But he said that he takes full responsibility and that he — and not Beijing — will have the ultimate say over appointing bishops.