Pope Francis and 34 Chilean bishops begin meeting late to discuss the clerical sexual abuse crisis in Chile in mid-May. Photo: CNS Letter from America
It was an interesting moment – a disturbing as well as inspiring one. I was listening to an early morning National Public Radio programme – the award-wining public affairs All Things Considered – and the interviewer was speaking to the survivor of prolonged and horrific clerical sex abuse. It had the potential to be a deeply emotional broadside against insensitive ecclesiastical authorities, and given the appalling history of sexual predation and cover-up in the Catholic Church it would have been perfectly justifiable, if not predictable, if it had.
But it didn’t.
The abused victim had only recently spent many hours of open, intense, personal conversation with the Bishop of Rome regarding his experiences and he spoke movingly and articulately, without rage or vindictiveness, non-combative, breathtakingly sincere and impressively humble. The Pope listened for hours and entered his pain.
Admonishment
Juan Carlos Cruz of Chile, and two other victims, Dr James Hamilton and Jose-Andres Murillo, must have felt emotionally validated at last. All three had tenaciously pursued justice from the Church hierarchy over their sustained abuse by the notorious clerical predator and charismatic pastor, Fernando Karadima. The bishops, and not just one of them, stalled, prevaricated, and even admonished the accused rather than punish the perpetrator.
Cruz and the others were outraged by the failure of the Chilean hierarchy to acknowledge the evil done, their lives sacrificed to reputation, precisely the behaviour deplored by Pope Benedict XVI in his Letter to the Irish.
Pope Francis’s unprecedented decision to meet with the victims privately in the Vatican, for hours, a no-holds-barred conversation in which he primarily listened and believed his interlocutors, was in some ways a corrective pastoral strategy. Previously, he had remonstrated them for what he perceived as calumnies against Bishop Juan Barros when profound objections were publicly made against his appointment to the Diocese of Osorno because of his alleged complicity in cover-ups.
But then something edifying occurred at the highest levels. The Pope acknowledged his own personal errors of judgment, dispatched the highly respected scourge of abusers, Charles Scicluna, Archbishop Primate of Malta, to unearth the truth of the allegations, to investigate the responses of the Chilean bishops to the history of charges, and to prepare a report that could be shared.
Archbishop Sciculna and his assistant did so. Francis acted promptly and summoned the entire Chilean hierarchy to Rome, interviews with the victims were given priority, the Pope scolded the bishops for their individual and collective behaviour and, in an unparalleled move, the bishops offered their resignations en masse to the pontiff.
Whatever the next move no one can gainsay the personal courage of the victims, the bravery of the Pope, yes, bravery, in confessing his personal failure in charity before he addressed the moral culpability of his brother bishops.
Contrast Francis’ leadership on this matter with Pope John Paul II, who kept a compromised cardinal archbishop of Vienna in power for years in spite of pressure from the Austrian hierarchy to remove him, refused to believe the substantial and credible charges against the corrupt founder of the Legionaries of Christ, declined to act against a curial Polish prelate with a history of abuse, and on and on.
The current Pope has had a chequered and inconsistent history regarding the utmost gravity of clerical sex abuse. Although he established and staffed the first Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors he appeared impotent in the wake of several controversial resignations from the Commission, as indicated, he was often defensive in the face of what he considered unsubstantiated allegations, and was reluctant to give the issue the high priority it deserves.
That’s now changed. Utterly.
Unlike John Paul II, Francis has been galvanised. He has learned that personal as well as institutional humility is the foundation for genuine reform.
Now it is time for national hierarchies to act likewise. Once again, in his ministry as Peter, Francis has set a model for gospel-infused leadership.
Michael W. Higgins is co-author with Peter Kavanagh of the award-winning Suffer the Children unto Me: A Critical Inquiry into the Clerical Sex Abuse Scandal and Distinguished Professor of Catholic Thought at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA.