Pope Francis has made empathy for the downtrodden and the powerless a hallmark of his papacy, but he has been less deft in dealing with the Roman Catholic Church’s own most defenseless victims — children sexually abused by clergy. At the outset of his visit last fall to the United States, the pope spoke feelingly of the pain and suffering endured by American bishops who had withstood the ongoing clergy sex-abuse scandal. His words of sympathy for the actual victims of that abuse — those whose lives have been scarred and destroyed by priests — came on the final day of his journey and, to many survivors, seemed nearly an afterthought.
Three years into his papacy, Francis is trying to hit the reset button on his sputtering efforts to add muscle to the church’s stated policy of zero tolerance for clerical abuse. After trying and failing for 12 months to establish a special Vatican tribunal that would hold negligent bishops accountable, he has issued a decree, in the form of an apostolic letter, serving notice that bishops can and should be removed from office if they actively or passively sanction sex abuse in their dioceses.
That Francis is making such a proclamation now, 14 years after explosive revelations of the church’s complicity in allowing and covering up the sexual abuse of minors in the United States, is a measure of how slowly, partially and inadequately the Vatican has come to terms with the scandal. Even after countless disclosures, year after year, Catholic bishops — who in many cases shuffled pedophile priests from one parish to another, allowing them to abuse again and again — continue to enjoy something approaching official impunity from Rome.
While a few disgraced bishops have resigned or been removed from office amid exposés that they shielded abusive clergy, most have retained the title of bishop and stayed active in the church, their status preserved even as their official duties were diminished. Never has the Vatican specified that it has removed any bishop for the offense of allowing children to be preyed upon.
Francis seemed to recognize the inadequacy of that record a year ago when he unveiled the tribunal that would investigate and judge allegations against bishops. But that new mechanism was stillborn, beset by legal and bureaucratic tangles and — little surprise — opposed by some bishops and cardinals.
Now the pope is trying again, setting out a new procedure and canonical law, and reminding existing Vatican agencies that failing to protect children from abusive clergy constitutes a “grave” offense and warrants dismissal — on the order of the pope himself.
But Vatican law was already adequate to act against complicit bishops; what’s been lacking is the will. Accordingly, the pope’s stern new pronouncement was received with skepticism from victims’ groups and advocates, who have heard previous pledges to hold bishops to account. Some of them pointed out that new procedures will be empty gestures unless they yield results — namely, unequivocal and explicit moves by the Vatican that demonstrate that even princelings of the church must answer for their part in damaging so many innocent lives.
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