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Gulf Pine Catholic
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July 18, 2014
Pope meets sex abuse victims, says clergy actions
cloaked in complicity
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Asking for forgiveness,
Pope Francis told abuse survivors that “despicable ac-
tions” caused by clergy have been hidden for too long
and had been “camouflaged with a complicity that can-
not be explained.”
“There is no place in the church’s ministry for those
who commit these abuses, and I commit myself not to
tolerate harm done to a minor by any individual, wheth-
er a cleric or not,” and to hold all bishops accountable
for protecting young people, the pope said during a spe-
cial early morning Mass for six survivors of abuse by
clergy. The Mass and private meetings held later with
each individual took place in the Domus Sanctae Mar-
thae -- the pope’s residence and a Vatican guesthouse
where the survivors also stayed.
In a lengthy, off-the-cuff homily in Spanish July 7,
the pope thanked the men and women -- two each from
Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany, for coming
to the Vatican to meet with him. The Vatican provided
its own translations of the unscripted homily.
The pope praised their courage for speaking out
about their abuse, saying that telling the truth “was a
service of love, since for us it shed light on a terrible
darkness in the life of the church.”
The pope said the scandal of abuse caused him “deep
pain and suffering. So much time hidden, camouflaged
with a complicity that cannot be explained.”
He called sex abuse a “crime and grave sin,” that
was made even worse when carried out by clergy.
“This is what causes me distress and pain at the fact
that some priests and bishops, by sexually abusing mi-
nors” violated the innocence of children and their own
vocation to God, he said.
“It is like a sacrilegious cult, because these boys and
girls had been entrusted to the priestly charism in order
to be brought to God. And those people sacrificed them
to the idol of concupiscence,” the pope said.
The pope asked God “for the grace to weep, the
grace for the church to weep and make reparations for
her sons and daughters who betrayed their mission, who
abused innocent persons” and left life-long scars.
He told the men and women sitting in the pews that
God loved them and he prayed that “the remnants of the
darkness which touched you may be healed.”
In an effort to help the abuse survivors heal, the
pope met individually with each one, accompanied by
a loved one or family member and a translator, Jesuit
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, told
journalists.
The pope spent a total of three hours and twenty
minutes in closed-door talks with each person, showing
the rest of the church that the path of healing is through
dialogue and truly listening to victims, Father Lombardi
said.
The Jesuit priest said the men and women were vis-
ibly moved by the Mass and meetings and had “felt lis-
tened to,” and that the encounter was “something posi-
tive on their journey” of healing.
The length and nature of the pope’s very first meet-
ing with abuse survivors represent “a sign, a model, an
example” for the rest of the church, that “listening is
needed” along with tangible efforts for understanding
and reconciliation, he said.
Responding to critics that the July 7 meeting and
Mass were ineffectual and part of a publicity stunt, Fa-
ther Lombardi said that if people had been able to see,
as he had, the reactions of the men and women who
took part in the private gathering, “it was clear that it
was absolutely not a public relations event.”
The raw emotion on people’s faces, including the
pope’s, as well as his strongly worded homily, all
showed the effort had been about “a dialogue with a
pastor and father who tries to understand deeply” the
wrongs that have been committed and the need “to be
honest about reality,” the Vatican spokesman said.
It was the first time Pope Francis met directly with a
group of victims of clerical abuse, following a tradition
begun by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who met
with victims for the first time as pope in 2008 during a
visit to Washington, D.C. The retired pope subsequently
met with other victims during his pastoral visits to Syd-
ney, Malta, Great Britain and Germany.
Pope Francis had told reporters in May that he would
be meeting with a group of survivors of abuse from var-
ious countries and would celebrate a private Mass with
them. The pope had asked Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley
of Boston -- the head of a new Vatican commission on
protecting minors -- to help organize the encounter.
The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Mi-
nors, which the pope established in December, met July
6 at the Vatican, and its members, including Cardinal
O’Malley, were also present at the July 7 Mass.
The commission, which currently has eight mem-
bers, including a survivor of clerical sex abuse, mental
health professionals and experts in civil and church law,
is tasked with laying out a pastoral approach to helping
victims and preventing abuse.
Chapter on abuse is not closed while people still suffer, says prelate
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- The crisis of child abuse by clergy
is not a thing of the past -- it will linger until the church
humbly and courageously reaches out to all people still
suffering in silence, said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin
of Dublin.
“To some it might seem less than prudent to think
that the church would go out of its way to seek out even
more victims and survivors,” opening up further pos-
sibilities for lawsuits, anguish and “trouble,” he told
representatives from bishops’ conferences from around
the world.
However, when Jesus tells pastors to leave behind
their flock to seek out the one who is lost, that mandate
“is itself unreasonable and imprudent but, like it or not,
that is precisely what Jesus asks us to do,” he said in an
introductory address July 7.
The archbishop was one of a number of speakers at
an annual meeting of the Anglophone Conference on
the Safeguarding of Children, Young People and Vul-
nerable Adults. The 2014 conference was being held
July 7-11 at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome and
was hosted by bishops from Ireland and Chile. Every
year, two different countries organize the conference.
Founded in 1996, the conference is an informal
gathering bringing together delegates from the church
in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, to share best
practices and develop solid norms in the prevention and
handling of the scandal of sexual abuse.
In his address, Archbishop Martin said, “The great-
est harm that we could do to the progress that has been
made right across the church is to slip back into a false
assurance that the crisis is a thing of the past.”
“What has happened has wounded the entire
church,” he said, and “the entire church is called to put
right what has happened.”
Putting things right not only demands creating safe
environments for all young people, he said, it requires
the church become “a privileged place of healing,”
where all survivors -- even those who are afraid or an-
gry -- “can genuinely come to feel that the church is a
place where they will encounter healing.”
“We are not that kind of church yet: and by far,” he
said.
Those in the church who downplay the crisis or try
to ignore or avoid mandates for prevention and enforce-
ment “damage the church’s witness to the healing pow-
er of Jesus Christ,” he said.
The church also needs to do more than guarantee
victims and families counseling, which often involves
directing victims to counselors, which in effect leaves
church members out of the process, he said.
“Healing cannot be delegated,” he said. It requires
every church member be humble and Christ-like in lov-
ingly embracing “wounded men and women, with all
the brutality and unattractiveness of wounds.”
Helping perpetrators, victims, parishes, communi-
ties and people who are distanced from the church out
of “disgust at what has happened to children” won’t
happen with “slick public relations gestures or even
from repeated words of apology,” the archbishop said.
See ABUSE-MARTIN, page 17
