Pope Plays the Media and Children Pay the Price

A four-day Vatican summit on child sex abuse ended yesterday. Pope Francis gave a half hour address.

He noted the “scourge of sexual abuse of minors” has been “a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies … particularly the great number committed within families.” Citing various references, the pope said the “first truth that emerges” is that “those who perpetrate abuse that is acts of physical, sexual, or emotional violence, are primarily parents, relatives, husbands of child brides, coaches, and teachers.”

Pope Francis also blamed “journalistic practices that often exploit, for various interests, the very tragedy experienced by little ones” along with the internet, pornography and sexual tourism.

He made special mention of “other forms of abuse”, such as “child soldiers, child prostitutes, starving children, child victims of war, refugee children, aborted children, and so many others.”

But no mea culpa for his role or that of his bishops.

The U.S. media ignored the above portions and headlined:

Pope Francis Ends Landmark Meeting by Again Calling for ‘All-Out Battle’ to Fight Sexual Abuse – New York Times

Pope calls abusive clergy ‘tools of Satan’ – CNN

Ending clergy abuse: Pope says priests must be guided by ‘holy fear of God’ – USA Today

Pope vows to end cover-ups, fight sex abuse with ‘wrath of God’  Boston Globe

Pope Francis calls for ‘all-out battle’ against child sex abuse – Religion News

At least the following had the decency to mitigate their headlines:

Pope Calls For ‘All-Out-Battle’ On Clergy Sex Abuse, With Few Specifics – NPR

Pope declares war on sexual abuse but victims feel betrayed – Reuters

At Vatican summit, Pope Francis calls for ‘all-out battle’ against sexual abuse but is short on specifics about next steps  Washington Post.

Pope vows to end abuse cover-ups but victims disappointed – AP

(To their credit, the Washington Post also did an investigative report on the horrendous sexual brutality against handicapped children that was reported to, but ignored by, Pope Francis.  And the AP also published this yesterday: “Argentine bishop’s case overshadows pope’s sex abuse summit.”)

Pope Francis Plays the Media

In his first interview as pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio said he chose to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi because he “is the man of poverty.”  “How I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor,” he told the 5,000 journalists and made international headlines.

But completely ignored by the U.S. media, Pope Francis has done nothing to make his Church any “poorer” and, in fact, has done just the opposite. 

In July 2013, the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child (CRC) asked Pope Francis for a written response to a list of concerns regarding child sex abuse. Pope Francis responded to the CRC on December 4 by stating that it was not the practice of his government to “disclose information on specific cases unless requested to do so by another country as part of legal proceedings” and “that the Vatican can provide information only about known and alleged child sex crimes that have happened on Vatican property.”

A rarity, the pope’s response was criticized by the U.S. media. The next day, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley stated that the pope would create a special Commission for the Protection of Minors.  The commission has accomplished nothing towards protecting children.

For a few weeks in the spring of 2015, articles in the U.S. were critical of Pope Francis’ lack of action against Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn, convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse, and St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt after the Ramsey County prosecutor brought criminal charges against the archdiocese for its handling of abuse allegations.

Pope Francis accepted their resignations and announced he was establishing a tribunal, hailed as “unprecedented,” to investigate bishops “accused of covering up sexual abuse of minors or of failing to protect children from pedophile priests.” It never happened. Meanwhile, Finn and Nienstedt settled into comfortable semi-retirement.

After Pope Francis called Chilean survivors of clerical sex abuse “liars” in January 2018, there were negative reports in the U.S. media. As part of the damage control, the pope accepted the resignation of three Chilean bishops, two of whom had already offered their resignations when they turned 75, as do all bishops. The third, Juan Barros, involved in the biggest sex abuse scandal in Chile, had offered his resignation three times before, but the pope did not accept it until July 2018.

Pope Francis has had a “change of heart,” said Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Edition. “It is “remarkable for any pope to say, I was wrong; I apologize; I seek forgiveness; I want to fix this,” said Inskeep.

“A remarkable reversal for Francis …. a new era is beginning in which bishops and the Church hierarchy will be held accountable for covering up and ignoring abuse,” noted the New York Times.

“Pope Francis is starting to get it …. The pontiff included himself in the problem [of ignoring and covering up for pedophile priests] – ‘me first of all,’ he wrote,” stated an editorial in the Washington Post.

“Francis has become the first pope to refer to a ‘culture of abuse and cover-up in the Catholic Church,” proclaimed the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, BishopAccountability.org has identified 101 Catholic bishops worldwide who have been accused publicly of sexual wrongdoing, including about six dozen who allegedly abused minors.

Summit was a “publicity stunt”

The summit should be viewed as “a publicity stunt, if we don’t see concrete action,” stated Pennsylvania state Rep. Mark Rozzi who was molested by a priest.

“Bishops keep saying that [the pope] wants the bishops to know what they need to do or the procedures, what they are for them to follow and what tasks need to be accomplished. The bishops have known this all along,”Rozzi explained.

Pope Francis also should “have known this all along.”

“The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy: Meeting the Problem in a Comprehensive Manner” was written in 1985 by Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, O.P. J.C – at the time a canon lawyer employed in the Vatican embassy in Washington D.C. – and F. Ray Mouton, J.D., a Louisiana attorney who had been hired by the diocese to defend the serial predator, Fr. Gilbert Gauthe. This document was sent to every U.S. bishop and to the Vatican.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children by Jason Berry was published in 1992.

The Boston Globe published a series of reports in 2002 on the sexual abuse of hundreds of Massachusetts’ children by priests, made famous by the movie “Spotlight.” Numerous reports followed in other newspapers about their own local scandals, as did government action.

Westchester County, New York, Grand Jury Report – 2002.

Suffolk County, New York, Grand Jury Report – 2003.

Attorney General Report from Manchester, New Hampshire – 2003.

Attorney General Report from Boston, Massachusetts – 2003.

Attorney General Report from Portland, Maine – 2003.

The Philadelphia Grand Jury Report – 2005.

From Ireland, three more government actions on clerical sex abuse:

Ferns Report, a report on the Diocese of Ferns – 2005.

Murphy Report, a report on the Dublin archdiocese – 2009.

Cloyne Report, a commission of investigation on Diocese of Cloyne – 2011

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (January 2014) “told Pope Francis that the pontifical secret led to the continuation of the abuse, to impunity of the perpetrators, and that to comply with the Treaty on the Rights of the Child he should abolish the secret.” He should “order through canon law mandatory reporting to civil authority. Pope Francis rejected that request.”

The UN Committee Against Torture (May 2014) “ordered the Vatican to hand over files containing details of clerical sexual abuse allegations to police forces around the world, … to use its authority over the Roman Catholic Church worldwide to ensure all allegations of clerical abuse are passed on to secular authorities and to impose ‘meaningful sanctions’ on any Church officials who fail to do so.”

Not reported by the U.S. media, Pope Francis wrote on April 11, 2018:  “As for my own responsibility, I acknowledge that I have made serious mistakes in the assessment and perception of [clerical sex abuse], especially because of the lack of truthful and balanced information.”

All the above reports, publications, commissions from the 1985 Doyle/Mouton document to the Australian Royal Commission report released in December 2017 concur – if Pope Francis had bothered to read any, some or all – that a pope should take the following actions if he really wanted to protect our children. These were enumerated once again by SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) just before the summit began:

Policy Change is Meaningless Without Discipline

“In refusing to discipline those prelates in attendance who have had an active role in covering up and minimizing cases of child sex abuse, Pope Francis sends the message that Bishops and Cardinals are able to openly flout the very policies designed to hold them accountable.

Absent a strong condemnation of those actions and severe punishment meted out by the Pope, it is hard to believe that any guidelines being discussed today – whether we in SNAP believe in them or not – will not simply be ignored as well.

The fact is, telling bishops that “they should cooperate with civil law enforcement investigations and announce decisions about predators to their communities once cases have been decided,” is nothing new. It is yet another toothless remark until dozens of bishops who refuse are fired.

Finally, while it sounds good when bishops are told it is a “grave sin” to withhold information from the Vatican about candidates for bishops, the fear of such sin did not prevent Church officials from covering up abuse or ignoring the wrongdoings of their colleagues in the past. Until scores of Bishops are fired for refusing to do this, nothing will change.

Policies and procedures are important, but the first step, the clearest pathway forward from this crisis, will come about from papal courage, not just policy changes.

And so, once again Pope Francis makes international headlines and no child is any safer for it.