Irish Church failed in
Francis omits line on victims during speech
POPE Francis has lamented how Irish Church authorities failed to respond to the crimes of sexual abuse, speaking during his first public appearance at the Vatican after accusations that he himself covered up for a former US cardinal.
Francis presided over his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square and spoke about his weekend trip to Ireland, where the abuse scandal has devastated the Catholic Church’s credibility.
“Alongside the joy of my visit to Ireland, I also tasted the pain and bitterness caused by various abuses caused by members of the Church in that country... in the past, ecclesial authorities did not know how to respond in an adequate way to these crimes,” he said.
He told the audience that Irish bishops had undertaken a “serious path of purification and reconciliation” and were working with the State to ensure the safety of young people.
Francis omitted from his remarks a line in his prepared text noting how he had prayed in Ireland for the Virgin Mary to intervene to give the Church strength to “firmly pursue truth and justice” to help victims heal.
The final day of the Irish trip was overshadowed by the release of a document from a retired Holy See diplomat, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, accusing Vatican authorities, including Francis, of covering up for ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – despite knowing for years that he regularly slept with religious scholars.
Viganò broke his silence yesterday and insisted he didn’t act out of revenge or anger but out of love for the Catholic Church.
In comments carried on the
blog of Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli, Archbishop Viganò said he was “serene and at peace” after publishing his declaration, albeit saddened by subsequent attempts to undermine his credibility.
His accusations have thrown Francis’s papacy into crisis. They have undermined the pontiff ’s claim of having “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and have fuelled the leftright ideological divide that has long split the Church and intensified under Francis. US bishops have called for an independent investigation to find out who knew about McCarrick’s abuse and when and how he was able to rise through the ranks even though it was an open secret that he regularly invited seminarians to his New Jersey beach house and into his bed.
Francis (left) last month removed McCarrick as a cardinal and ordered him to live a lifetime of penance and prayer after a US Church investigation determined that an allegation he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible.
Viganò’s 11-page letter alleges that Francis knew of McCarrick’s attitude to seminarians starting in 2013, but rehabilitated him from sanctions that Pope Benedict XVI had allegedly imposed on him in 2009 or 2010.
There is ample evidence, however, that the Vatican under Benedict and St John Paul II also covered up the information, and that any reported sanctions Benedict imposed were never enforced since McCarrick travelled widely for the Church during those years, including to celebrate Mass with other US bishops at the tomb of St Peter.