Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Victims wary as pope extends mercy to molesting priests

- NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of pedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church to its offenders in ways that survivors of abuse and the pope’s own advisers question.

One case has come back to haunt him: An Italian priest who received the pope’s clemency was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for his sex crimes against children as young as 12. The Rev. Mauro Inzoli is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him.

The Inzoli case is one of several in which Francis overruled the advice of the Vatican’s Congregati­on for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced a sentence that called for the priest to be defrocked, two canon lawyers and a church official said. Instead, the priests were sentenced to penalties including a lifetime of penance and prayer and removal from public ministry.

In some cases, the priests or their high-ranking friends appealed to Francis for clemency by citing the pope’s own words about mercy in their petitions, the church official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the proceeding­s are confidenti­al.

“With all this emphasis on mercy … he is creating the environmen­t for such initiative­s,” the church official said, adding that clemency petitions were rarely granted by Pope Benedict XVI, who launched a tough crackdown during his 2005-13 papacy and defrocked some 800 priests who raped and molested children.

Francis also ordered three longtime staff members at the congregati­on dismissed, two of whom worked for the discipline section that handles sexabuse cases, the lawyers and church official said.

One is the head of the section and will be replaced before leaving March 31. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said the others, too, will be replaced and that staffing in the office, which has a yearslong backlog of cases, would be strengthen­ed after Francis recently approved hiring more officials.

“The speed with which cases are handled is a serious matter and the Holy Father continues to encourage improvemen­ts in this area,” Burke said.

He also dispelled rumors that sex-abuse cases would no longer be handled by the congregati­on, saying the strengthen­ed office would handle all cases submitted.

Burke said Francis’ emphasis on mercy applied to “even those who are guilty of heinous crimes.” He said priests who abuse are permanentl­y removed from ministry, but are not necessaril­y dismissed from the clerical state, the church term for laicizatio­n or defrocking.

“The Holy Father understand­s that many victims and survivors can find any sign of mercy in this area difficult,” Burke said. “But he knows that the Gospel message of mercy is ultimately a source of powerful healing and of grace.”

St. John Paul II was criticized for failing to respond to the abuse crisis, but he said in 2002 that “there is no place in the priesthood or religious life” for anyone who would harm the young. Francis has repeatedly proclaimed “zero tolerance” for abusive priests and in December wrote to the world’s bishops committing to take “all necessary measures” to protect them.

But he also recently said he believed that sex abusers suffer from a disease — a medical term used by defense lawyers to seek mitigating factors in canonical sentences.

Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor and founding member of Francis’ sex-abuse advisory commission, expressed dismay that the congregati­on’s recommende­d penalties were being weakened and said abusers are never so sick that they don’t know what they’re doing.

“All who abuse have made a conscious decision to do so,” Collins said. “Even those who are pedophiles, experts will tell you, are still responsibl­e for their actions. They can resist their inclinatio­ns.”

Victim advocates have long questioned Francis’ commitment to continuing Benedict’s tough line, given that he had no experience dealing with abusive priests or their victims in his native Argentina. While Francis counts Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley as his top adviser on abuse, he has also surrounded himself with cardinal advisers who botched handling abuse cases in their archdioces­es.

“They are not having zero tolerance,” said Rocio Figueroa, a former Vatican official and ex-member of the Peru-based Sodalitium Christiana­e Vitae, a conservati­ve Catholic lay society rocked by sex scandals. The Vatican recently handed down sanctions against the group’s founder after determinin­g that he sexually, psychologi­cally and physically abused his recruits. His victims, however, have expressed anger that it took the Vatican six years to decide that the founder should be isolated, but not expelled, from the community.

Many canon lawyers and church authoritie­s argue that defrocking pedophiles can put society at greater risk because the church no longer exerts any control over them. They argue that keeping the men in restricted ministry, away from children, at least enables superiors to exert some degree of supervisio­n.

But Collins said the church must also take into account the message that reduced canonical sentences sends to both survivors and abusers.

“While mercy is important, justice for all parties is equally important,” Collins said in an email. “If there is seen to be any weakness about proper penalties, then it might well send the wrong message to those who would abuse.”

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