Opinion: Pope Francis finally called out the evil of clergy sex abuse. It’s an important first step.
By Elizabeth Bruenig Elizabeth Bruenig Opinion columnist focusing on politics, religion and morality in public life. Email Bio Follow Opinion columnist March 1 at 6:43 PM The Vatican’s summit on sexual abuse concluded Sunday with an address from Pope Francis. The meeting drew together heads of bishops’ conferences from across the globe in hopes of producing concrete policies aimed at preventing clergy sexual abuse and responding properly to cases that arise anyway.
It was the right note for Francis to end on, especially since he has shown signs of temptation toward more exonerating narratives for the church before. In September, for example, Francis claimed in a homily that “In these times, it seems like the Great Accuser has been unchained and is attacking bishops. . . . True, we are all sinners, we bishops . . . [Satan] tries to uncover the sins, so they are visible in order to scandalize the people.
John Grogan, a Philadelphia lawyer and Catholic, was surprised when his family’s own priest approached him in the aftermath of the 2002 explosion of the church sexual abuse crisis, asking for his help as an advocate. The priest had been convicted of possession of child pornography decades prior — but had been allowed back into ministry. When he sought Grogan’s help, he thought he was facing a canonical trial and potential laicization.
Several of the priests he worked with, Grogan told me, saw themselves as “victimized,” with a tendency for “blaming others. If they grudgingly admit that they did what they did,” Grogan said, they were still much more focused on perceived unfairnesses heaped upon them in the trial process and the media. “My overwhelming impression of many of them. . . . has been just a shocking, shocking lack of emotional maturity.