USA TODAY International Edition
Sexual abuse scandal cries out for papal leadership
As horrifying tales of priests molesting children have swept through Catholic dioceses across the country during the past 16 years, there is one equally horrifying constant: a systematic cover-up by bishops and cardinals who hid predators, enabling them to ruin the lives of thousands more children.
Last week, the tale was told again in vivid and disturbing detail. A Pennsylvania grand jury found that 300 priests across the state had molested more than 1,000 children over seven decades. The victims included a girl in the hospital for a tonsillectomy and five sisters, one of them just 18 months old.
The grand jury laid bare the depths to which church elders sank to hide the scandal, regardless of how many children were hurt.
Coming just weeks after Theodore McCarrick, one of the highest-profile church leaders ever accused of molestation, was removed from ministry and left the College of Cardinals, this latest horror makes clear that the Vatican must do more than invoke prayers and make promises.
When Pope Francis was elected in 2013, abuse survivors and other Catholics held high hopes that a man of such humanity and humility would be the one to lead the church out of this unending and sordid scandal. So far, he has failed to do so.
❚ Enablers have remained largely unscathed. Since 2013, just three U.S. bishops have resigned but only after scandals so horrific that no other choice was tenable. And none of them were removed from ministry.
❚ In 2014, the pope named The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, but the panel’s two abuse survivors resigned in disgust. One of them, Peter Saunders, now says ruefully that the commission was little more than “a meaningless bit of window dressing.”
❚ The commission’s most concrete proposal — a tribunal to handle complaints against bishops, addressing a gaping hole in church-led investigations — was accepted by the pope. But it was never even established.
Now Pope Francis has another opportunity to show his words have meaning. It will be up to him to see to it that allegations against Cardinal Donald Wuerl are investigated independently. As bishop in Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, Wuerl barred some accused priests from parishes but failed to do his duty at other times, the grand jury found.
Last week, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called for a new method to investigate complaints about bishops, including “substantial involvement” of lay people. The Pope should see to it that this happens, and not just in the United States. This scandal has engulfed the church worldwide.
During his first visit to the U.S., in 2015, Francis vowed, “I commit myself to ensuring that the Church makes every effort to protect minors and I promise that those responsible will be held to account.” Francis has the power he needs to keep that promise. All he needs is the will.