Pope Francis Acts to Confront the Problem of Pedophile Priests

Pope Francis today named the first members of a commission that will advise him on sex abuse policy. The new commission will include both lay and religious experts - and an Irish woman, Marie Collins, who was assaulted as a 13-year-old by a hospital chaplain in her native Ireland and who has, as an adult, become a prominent campaigner for accountability in the Church. The goal of the initial members is to start outlining the commission's statutes, tasks and priorities. The sex abuse scandal has badly damaged the Catholic Church's reputation around the world and has cost dioceses and religious orders billions of dollars in legal fees and settlements. Pope Francis promised last December that he would enact policies to protect children, train church personnel and keep abusers out of the clergy. But Francis gave no details until today. A key open question is whether the commission will deal with the critical issue of disciplining bishops who cover up for abusers. In a statement, the Vatican hinted that the commission will do this, saying the commission would look into both "civil and canonical duties and responsibilities" for church personnel. Canon law already provides for sanctions if a bishop is negligent in carrying out his duties, but no punishment has ever been imposed on a bishop for failing to report a pedophile priest to police. In 2012, Rome's Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University hosted a seminar for bishops from around the world to educate them on best practices to protect children, and several participants from that conference are now founding members of the pope's commission. During that 2012 conference, Collins told the bishops of her own ordeal, of the hospitalizations, anxiety and depression she endured after Irish church authorities didn't believe her when she reported her attacker, and then blamed her for the assault. The investigation was obstructed and the laity misled. "I was treated as someone with an agenda against the Church. The police investigation was obstructed and the laity misled. I was distraught," Collins said. The Reverend Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the creation of the commission is evidence that Francis believes "the Church must hold the protection of minors among her highest priorities." But in a March 5 interview with Corriere della Sera, Francis complained that the Church had been unfairly attacked. He acknowledged the "profound" wounds abuse leaves and credited Pope Benedict XVI with turning the Church around. In 2001, Benedict personally took over handling sexual abuse cases because bishops were transferring pedophile priests instead of punishing them. In his final two years as pope, Benedict defrocked 400 abusive priests. In the March 5 interview, Francis also said : "The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution that has moved with transparency and responsibility. No one has done more. And yet the Church is the only one that has been attacked." The initial commission group named Saturday will also name its own peaders and propose other members to better reflect the Church's geographic diversity. Seven of the initial members are European and one is American, to facilitate their organizational meetings. The group includes three clergy and five laity, including four women. In announcing the appointments, a Vatican spokesman said they reflect late Pope John Paul II’s statement that “there is no place in the priesthood or religious life for those who would harm the young.” In a sign of his personal interest in the commission's work, Pope Francis named a fellow Argentinian and Jesuit priest, the Reverend Humberto Miguel Yáñez, who was received by Francis into the Jesuit order in 1975 and who studied under him at an Argentine Jesuit college. Yáñez today heads the moral theology department at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome, and is seen as having direct access to Pope Feancis. Other members announced today include :-- The Reverend Hans Zollner, a German Jesuit who is the academic vice rector of Gregorian University and head of its Institute of Psychology, and who coordinated a major anti-abuse conference in Rome in 2012 called “Toward Healing and Renewal.” -- Hanna Suchocka, a former prime minister of Poland and currently Poland’s ambassador to the Vatican. -- Claudio Papale, an Italian lay expert on church law who teaches at Rome’s Pontifical Urbaniana University. -- Catherine Bonnet, a French child psychologist who has written widely on the effects of sexual abuse and exploitation on children. -- Baroness Sheila Hollins, a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and current president of the British Medical Association, who is frequently consulted on child development issues in the United Kingdom. Sources reportedly told John Allen of the Boston Globe that Francis chose not to issue a legal document providing a structure and mandate for the new commission, preferring that the people he has named work out those details. While plans originally called for the anti-abuse body to be housed within the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, today’s announcement suggests it will have an independent profile and report directly to the pope. The Boston newspaper is especially interested in the new commission because Pope Francis named Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston to the commission. O’Malley, already the obly American on the pope’s “G8” council of Cardinal advisers, is also the sole American among the commission members announced today. O’Malley’s new responsibility is not full-time, meaning he will not move to Rome and will continue to serve as the Archbishop of Boston. O'Malley declined a Boston Globe request to speak about his role on the commission beyond what was in the Vatican announcement. But, in a February interview with the Globe, Cardinal O’Malley discussed the commission and Francis’s broader approach to the abuse crisis : “He’s certainly aware of how serious this issue is...I don’t think he has a plan yet for how to deal with it.” O’Malley said in February that one important function of the new commission might be working with national-level conferences of bishops around the world to ensure they have all implemented anti-abuse guidelines. The aim of that effort, he said, is “to have some clarity about what the expectations are throughout the world.” O’Malley also suggested that the commission might be able to make progress on what many critics see as the most serious unfinished business from the crisis - holding bishops accountable if they fail to apply the church’s official “zero tolerance” policy. Those critics point, for instance, to Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, who pleaded guilty in September 2012 to a misdemeanor charge of failure to report a priest accused of abuse but who remains in office. "I hope this commission will help the church develop protocols, so there will be a very clear path to follow” in such cases, O’Malley said. He added that it would likely not be the commission’s job to investigate individual cases, but rather to help develop procedures the pope can apply when a bishop is accused of failing to respond appropriately. The new commission is expected to meet two or three times a year, with members staying in touch by phone and e-mail at other times. ~~~~~ Dear readers, we can only applaud Pope Francis for beginning the process of clarifying and unifying the Catholic Church's position on child sexual abuse by priests. This work is rightly placed in the hands of lay men and women, including both experts and the abused. But, the commission must not become an institutionalized debating body. It must work closely with Francis to provide clear and severe procedures for dealing with pedophile priests - promptly. Child sexual abuse is, afterall, not a problem of theological niceties. It is a matter of repairing what was a basic affront and a profound treachery directed toward the faithful and their precious cbildren. Action is required and now Pope Francis seems to be ready. It is not an hour too soon.