A child abuse scandal is coming for Francis
Note: Not an endorsement
The Catholic Church has long been plagued by sickening
scandals involving priests abusing children. And there is reportedly
another scandal coming — this one of the pope's own making.
Two people with direct ties to the Vatican tell me that
Pope Francis, following the advice of his clubby group of allies in the
curia, is pressing to undo the reforms that were instituted by his
predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI in handling the cases of
abuser priests. Francis is pushing ahead with this plan even though the
curial officials and cardinals who favor it have already brought more
scandal to his papacy by urging him toward lenient treatment of abusers.
In 2001, the Vatican instituted a massive reform
in how it handled the cases of priests who abused children. The power
to deal with these cases was taken away from the Congregation of the
Clergy and the Roman Rota (the Vatican's Court), and placed in the
office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
Subsequently, the volume and speed with which the Catholic Church defrocked abuser priests went up. This was Pope Benedict's legacy of trying to confront "the filth" in the Church.
Recently, Pope Francis had the Vatican's secretary of
state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, request an opinion from the Pontifical
Council for Legislative Texts, led by Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio,
regarding the possibility of transferring competence to deal with abuser
priests from the CDF back to Clergy and the Rota. Coccopalmerio's
office responded with a positive answer.
And although it was not mentioned in media reports,
Pope Francis also discussed this "reform of the reform" on child abuse
when he met with his special advisory group, the Council of Cardinals,
in mid-December, an official with direct knowledge of the meeting told
me. The press office of the Vatican did not respond to requests for
confirmation or comment.
Pope Francis has always talked tough on child abuse. In a letter to Catholic bishops on Dec. 28, the feast of the Holy Innocents, he decried child abuse. "Persons responsible for the protection of those children destroyed their dignity. We regret this deeply and we beg forgiveness. We join in the pain of the victims and weep for this sin. The sin of what happened, the sin of failing to help, the sin of covering up and denial, the sin of the abuse of power."
Pope Francis has always talked tough on child abuse. In a letter to Catholic bishops on Dec. 28, the feast of the Holy Innocents, he decried child abuse. "Persons responsible for the protection of those children destroyed their dignity. We regret this deeply and we beg forgiveness. We join in the pain of the victims and weep for this sin. The sin of what happened, the sin of failing to help, the sin of covering up and denial, the sin of the abuse of power."
Francis was elected in part to reform a dysfunctional
curia. So shifting responsibilities is not troubling in itself. And it
is hard not to credit the sincerity of his jeremiads against child
abusers. But the CDF's performance on this issue is miles better than
the situation before 2001.
So why revert?
Perhaps because the CDF has taken a tough, rules-based
approach to the issue of child abuse, which clashes with the more
personal autocratic style of this pope. Or perhaps because reforming the
reform would reward his allies, and humiliate an antagonist.
Rumors of this reform have been circulating in Rome for
months. And not happily. Pope Francis and his cardinal allies have been
known to interfere with CDF's judgments on abuse cases. This
intervention has become so endemic to the system that cases of priestly
abuse in Rome are now known to have two sets of distinctions. The first
is guilty or innocent. The second is "with cardinal friends" or "without
cardinal friends."
And indeed, Pope Francis is apparently pressing ahead with
his reversion of abuse practices even though the cardinals who are
favorable to this reform of reform have already brought him trouble
because of their friends.
Consider the case of Fr. Mauro Inzoli. Inzoli lived in a
flamboyant fashion and had such a taste for flashy cars that he earned
the nickname "Don Mercedes." He was also accused of molesting children.
He allegedly abused minors in the confessional. He even went so far as
to teach children that sexual contact with him was legitimated by
scripture and their faith. When his case reached CDF, he was found
guilty. And in 2012, under the papacy of Pope Benedict, Inzoli was
defrocked.
But Don Mercedes was "with cardinal friends," we have
learned. Cardinal Coccopalmerio and Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, now dean
of the Roman Rota, both intervened on behalf of Inzoli, and Pope Francis
returned him to the priestly state in 2014, inviting him to a "a life
of humility and prayer." These strictures seem not to have troubled
Inzoli too much. In January 2015, Don Mercedes participated in a
conference on the family in Lombardy.
This summer, civil authorities finished their own trial
of Inzoli, convicting him of eight offenses. Another 15 lay beyond the
statute of limitations. The Italian press hammered the Vatican,
specifically the CDF, for not sharing the information they had found in
their canonical trial with civil authorities. Of course, the pope
himself could have allowed the CDF to share this information with civil
authorities if he so desired.
It's astonishing that after giving in to requests for
intervention by Coccopalmerio and Pinto — requests which were unjust and
humiliating — the pope would proceed to give authority over some child
abuse cases to Pinto. But perhaps that isn't the first thing on his
mind. Doing so would reward one of Pope Francis' friends and humiliate
someone he sees as an antagonist.
The veteran church reporter John Allen recently noted in Crux
that Pope Francis doesn't always take the direct approach when trying
to kneecap his critics within the church, or the obstacles to his reform
in the Vatican. Sometimes, he goes around them. Allen wrote that "it
means formally keeping people in place while entrusting the real
responsibility to somebody else and thus rendering the original
official, if not quite irrelevant, certainly less consequential."
That has been Francis' approach with CDF, led by the
German Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, in the past. When Pope Francis
wanted to change the process for declaring marriages null, he
essentially skipped over Müller, a constant critic of the pope's views
on marriage and the sacraments. Instead the pope went to Cardinal Coccopalmerio. The loyalty of Monsignor Pinto is unquestioned. It was Pinto who lashed out at four cardinals who publicly questioned the orthodoxy of the pope's recent document, Amoris Laetitia.
The four cardinals criticized the document for encouraging changes to
Catholic sacramental practice they held to be impossible given Catholic
doctrine. Pinto reminded them that the pope could remove their status as
cardinals. Meanwhile Cardinal Müller seemed to be giving aid and comfort
to these cardinals, saying that the sacramental practice of giving
communion to people in adulterous relationships could not be endorsed.
In any case, on abuse, the justice dealt out by Müller's
CDF seems to be too harsh for the pope and his allies. And so, the pope
hopes to render the CDF irrelevant in these cases.
Nothing has been decided with any finality, and it is
possible that saner heads will prevail and remind Pope Francis which
cardinals and offices are really serving his best interests and doing
justice in the name of his authority. Or at least remind him that while
the press may cheer him for undoing John Paul II's teaching on communion
for the divorced, they may not cheer him for lightening the penalties
on child molesters who happen to have friends in his inner circle.