Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines is known as the “Asian Francis.” But he has been criticized for not being vocal enough about his country’s brutal drug war and clerical sex abuse.
…Francis was the only pope in the modern era who was born outside Europe. If Cardinal Tagle ascends to the papacy, he would be the first Asian pontiff in modern times. (Several popes in antiquity were from Syria, which is technically in West Asia, though it is now considered part of the Middle East.)
At the Vatican, Cardinal Tagle oversees missionary work. Widely known by his nickname “Chito,” he is often called the “Asian Francis” for his ability to connect with the poor, his call for action against climate change and his criticism of the “harsh” stance adopted by Catholic clerics toward gay people, divorced people and unwed mothers. He is popular for his humility, and his homilies have drawn the faithful to the pews and to Facebook streams.
But as leader of the church in the Philippines, he was criticized by activists and fellow priests as being timid about the scourge of clerical sex abuse. Those complaints continued as his profile in the church rose. Last month, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an advocacy group, urged the Vatican to investigate Cardinal Tagle’s conduct in relation to cases of alleged clerical abuse in the Central African Republic and New Zealand. (The group also sought inquiries into five other cardinals.)
At home, Cardinal Tagle has been faulted for not adequately addressing former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, in which tens of thousands of people were summarily executed.
“Had Chito spoken clearly and courageously during the Duterte administration, fewer people could have died,” said the Rev. Robert Reyes, who was in seminary with Cardinal Tagle.
At the time, the cardinal was archbishop of Manila. He called for an “end to the waste of human lives” but did not confront Mr. Duterte directly.
…“He tries to persuade people rather than intimidate them,” said the Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, who taught Cardinal Tagle at The Catholic University of America in Washington in the 1980s.
…“This is a very Asian approach,” [Tagle] told the Union Catholic Asian News in 2013, “and that approach leads to healing.”
“The sad thing is that Cardinal Tagle is very much out of touch with the realities facing the sexual abuse of children by priests and brothers,” said the Rev. Shay Cullen, an Irish priest working in the Philippines. He said the cardinal had told him the church was more concerned about matters like divorce.
Cardinal Tagle’s approach has contributed to a culture of impunity in the church in the Philippines, according to a watchdog group, BishopAccountability.org.
Cardinal Tagle has acknowledged being criticized for “not being strong, that I don’t condemn enough,” but he said he took heart from Francis’s example, according to a 2015 interview with Crux, a publication specializing in the Catholic Church. “Who am I to judge?” he said, repeating Francis’s position on gay priests.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/world/asia/luis-tagle-asian-pope.html
Tagle is undoubtedly an admirable man, but David withstood Duterte’s aggressive calls for his murder and represents a bolder, more assertive and courageous figure.
A pope from Africa or Italy would also be appealing to
the voting conclave.
Photo courtesy of Christoph Wagener
ReplyDeletehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franciscus-PP.JPG
Gonzalinho
WHO WILL BE THE NEXT POPE? KEY CANDIDATES IN AN UNPREDICTABLE PROCESS
ReplyDeleteBy Aleem Maqbool, Paul Kirby & Rebecca Seales
BBC News
May 3, 2025
Who will be the next pope?
The decision will be made when the College of Cardinals begins meeting in conclave from 16:30 on 7 May in the 15th Century Sistine Chapel.
It will involve 133 cardinals aged under 80, who will debate and then vote for their preferred candidate until a single name secures the support of two-thirds of them.
Their choice could have a profound impact on the Catholic Church and the world's 1.4 billion baptised Roman Catholics, and it is harder than ever to predict who it will be.
With 80% of the cardinals appointed by Pope Francis himself, most are not only electing a pope for the first time, but will offer a broad global perspective.
For the first time in history, fewer than half of those given a vote will be European.
And although the college may be dominated by his appointments, they were not exclusively "progressive" or "traditionalist".
Could the cardinals elect an African, an Asian or even an American pope, or might they favour one of the old hands of the Vatican administration?
To be continued
Gonzalinho
WHO WILL BE THE NEXT POPE? KEY CANDIDATES IN AN UNPREDICTABLE PROCESS
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Here are some of the names being mentioned as Francis's potential successor.
Pietro Parolin
Nationality: Italian
Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle
Nationality: Filipino
Robert Prevost
Nationality: American
Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson
Nationality: Ghanaian
Fridolin Ambongo Besungu
Nationality: Congolese
Peter Erdo
Nationality: Hungarian
Mario Grech
Nationality: Maltese
Matteo Zuppi
Nationality: Italian
Joseph Tobin
Nationality: American
Angelo Scola
Nationality: Italian
Reinhard Marx
Nationality: German
Pierbattista Pizzaballa
Nationality: Italian
Marc Ouellet
Nationality: Canadian
Robert Sarah
Nationality: Guinean
Jean-Marc Aveline
Nationality: French
Charles Maung Bo
Nationality: Myanmar
Michael Czerny
Nationality: Canadian
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgxk40ndk1o
African cardinals lean conservative for cultural reasons.
The conclave might swing to an Italian—not as conservative as the Africans or as experimental and risky as the Asians—ideally, a moderate who would represent a breather after Francis’ edgy, fretful term.
Gonzalinho
CARDINALS AT A CROSSROADS: WHILE SOME WANT TO CONTINUE FRANCIS’ REFORMS, OTHERS WANT A DIFFERENT KIND OF POPE
ReplyDeleteBy Christopher Lamb, CNN Vatican correspondent
CNN
Updated 6:13 AM EDT, Fri May 2, 2025
The pontificate of Pope Francis profoundly shook up the Catholic Church.
His restless 12-year-papacy, with its focus on a “poor church for the poor,” called on Catholicism to leave its comfort zone and pitch its tent among the poorest communities. Francis opened discussions on topics that were once viewed off limits, such as the role of women. He welcomed LGBTQ Catholics as “children of God” and opened the door for remarried divorcees to receive communion. He also generated attention with his strong critiques of economic injustice and calls to protect the environment.
Throughout his papacy, however, Francis faced fierce resistance from small, but noisy, conservative Catholic groups and a certain amount of indifference and silent resistance from bishops in the hierarchy.
…A fault line is already emerging. Some cardinals want the next pope to follow firmly in Francis’ footsteps and focus on the “diversity” of the universal church, whose axis has shifted away from Europe and the West. Others are calling on the next pope to emphasize “unity” – code for a more predictable, steady-as-she-goes approach.
Austen Ivereigh, a papal biographer and Catholic commentator, puts the two positions this way.
“The first (diversity) sees Francis as the first pope of a new era in the Church, showing us how to evangelize today, and how to hold together our differences in a fruitful way,” he explained.
“The second (unity) sees the Francis era as a disruption, an interruption, that now needs to be reined back by a return to a greater uniformity.”
Those pushing the “unity” line include some of the most vociferous critics of the late pope, such as Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Vatican’s former doctrine chief who Francis replaced in 2017. Characterizing the last pontificate as a divisive authoritarian, he recently told the New York Times: “All dictators are dividing.”
Most cardinals will not share Müller’s characterization, and cardinals have repeatedly expressed appreciation for Francis’ concern for those at the margins and his ability to connect with people.
But a number of them are rallying around the “unity” slogan and have plenty of criticisms of the last papacy, including his decision to embark on a major, multi-year reform process – the synod – that has opened questions about women’s leadership and how power is exercised in the church.
Some also didn’t like Francis’ full-throated critiques of priests who like to wear elaborate vestments or his offering of blessings to same-sex couples, which has been rejected by some bishops in Africa. The feeling among the “unity” group, which has the support of some retired cardinals, is that the next pope needs less of the disruptive style of Francis.
To be continued
Gonzalinho
CARDINALS AT A CROSSROADS: WHILE SOME WANT TO CONTINUE FRANCIS’ REFORMS, OTHERS WANT A DIFFERENT KIND OF POPE
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“His (the pope’s) first duty is to preserve and deepen the unity of the church,” Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, in London, told CNN. Nichols praised Francis’ pastoral gestures, although added: “There probably is a balancing up to do, but that is not primarily to do with arguments or teaching or doctrine.”
…Others see the unity argument as superficially attractive but having the wrong focus. One of those is Cardinal Michael Czerny, who worked closely with Pope Francis, and has led the Vatican office for human development. He said that unity – while essential – cannot be a program or a policy.
“The terrible danger is, if you make this your obsession, and if you try to promote unity as your primary objective, you end up with uniformity,” he said. “And this is exactly what we don’t need. We spent decades now trying to learn to get beyond uniformity to a true catholicity, a true pluralism.”
Czerny added: “It’s interesting the words (unity and uniformity) are so close, but the difference is huge. I think one is the kiss of death, and the other is life and abundant life.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/02/europe/cardinals-conclave-pope-successor-crossroads-intl
Superlative coverage by CNN—the freedom of the press the world and especially the Roman Catholic Church needs on World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2025.
Yes, unity in diversity that humbly acknowledges the legitimate freedom of the faithful to believe and practice the Roman Catholic faith, not the uniformity of clerical and religious leaders that imposes rigid and sometimes even incorrect interpretations of the faith together with their own personal and idiosyncratic penchants—in the words of Czerny: uniformity is the kiss of death, while genuine unity is life and abundant life.
Gonzalinho
Papa Francesco was a good pope. We need another reformist pope and not in a legalistic sense. Someone who feels with the people, with a keen mind who gets it, and speaks words of hope constantly—Franciscus II.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
DISCERNMENT OF THE SPIRITS IN THE LIFE OF PAPA FRANCESCO
ReplyDeleteAt the heart of many differences between Pope Francis and his critics was not only a misunderstanding of discernment but an underappreciation of the action of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Perhaps the biggest pushback to his papacy from within the church occurred in this arena. The Synod on Synodality (in addition to other synods, like the Synod on the Family) was fiercely criticized because this exercise in “discernment” (a favorite Jesuit word that connotes a particular style of prayerful decision-making) was seen as throwing open the door to “anything goes.” In effect, the argument went, why do we need discernment when we have all the rules we need? Why discuss controversial topics when church teaching is clear? Besides, isn’t discernment just an excuse to talk forever?
As a Jesuit, Francis knew otherwise. Discernment, as described in the Spiritual Exercises, trusts not only that the Holy Spirit wants us to make good decisions, but that the Spirit will help us make good decisions. The Synod, in effect, was a living out of that conviction: that the Holy Spirit will guide us.
Discernment also trusts that the Holy Spirit is at work in the individual and can work through anyone. And it is here, when you dig down, past the political, social, ecclesiological, theological and even spiritual differences, where his detractors did not understand Francis. As a former novice director, spiritual director and provincial superior, Francis had a great reverence for the work of the Holy Spirit in the individual and in the individual conscience, because he had seen it. It is impossible to accompany people as a spiritual director and not come away with a reverence for the mysterious, strange and even challenging activity of the Holy Spirit in every person. So why would one not want to listen to the voice of the Spirit among the people of God? So what seemed to detractors as “anything goes” was in reality reverence for the Spirit.
This also touches upon issues of conscience. Two areas in which Francis experienced severe pushback were both related to conscience matters. The first was his insistence in “Amoris Laetitia” (in a footnote) that divorced and remarried Catholics could consult their pastors and then their consciences about receiving Communion. This caused a great uproar and in some places outrage. Respect for conscience is a constitutive part of Catholic teaching, as is reverencing the Spirit there. “Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths,” wrote the bishops of the Second Vatican Council in “Gaudium et Spes.”
But if you listened to Francis’ critics, you would have thought he had made a bargain with the devil.
Likewise for his five most famous words, “Who am I to judge?” This was initially a question referring to the experience of gay priests, which he subsequently expanded to all gay people. Again, it was trusting a person’s conscience. And again, it infuriated some people.
An important part of discernment of course is listening. How could you possibly discern where the Holy Spirit is at work if you don’t listen? And so Francis over the course of his papacy listened to groups that sometimes felt that they had no voice in the church. Perhaps most surprisingly, as Outreach reported, he met regularly with transgender Catholics from around the world. Listening means listening especially to those people whose voices are not often heard.
To be continued
Gonzalinho
DISCERNMENT OF THE SPIRITS IN THE LIFE OF PAPA FRANCESCO
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On a personal note, during the times that I met with Francis one-on-one (in addition to a translator or two) it was easy to speak to him in the “language” of a Jesuit. I knew that I could talk freely not only about broad topics like the Spiritual Exercises, discernment and Ignatian contemplation, but also knew that if I mentioned my annual eight-day retreat, my provincial or my tertianship he knew exactly what I meant. He once asked me how my latest retreat had gone and when I was recounting it to him, I felt that I was speaking more to a Jesuit spiritual director than to a pope.
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/04/21/pope-francis-death-jesuit-obituary-249957
—James Martin, S.J., “Pope Francis never stopped being a Jesuit,” America, April 21, 2025
Lessons from Papa Francesco on the discernment of the spirits:
- God the Holy Spirit speaks anywhere and through anyone—listen to him. He speaks through the marginalized in society.
- Respect the conscience of the individual. Reverence the presence and action of the Holy Spirit there.
“Over the pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one’s own conscience which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism.”—Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
I, the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart, giving to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their deeds.—Jeremiah 17:10
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-imposed-conscience.html
Gonzalinho
FRANCISCUS BY EXAMPLE
ReplyDeleteAs the first member of a religious order to be elected pope since 1831, Francis was also the first pope since then to have taken a vow of poverty. (Diocesan priests make a promise of obedience to their bishop, and a promise of celibacy and aim to live simply, but do not take a vow of poverty.) Much was made, for example, of his not wearing the traditional papal red shoes, being driven in a small Fiat and not living in the Apostolic Palace but in the relatively simple Casa Santa Marta, a guest house. But his commitment to poverty was more than a commitment to personal poverty. It was also his commitment to those who live in poverty, which he stated shortly after his election: “How I want a church that is poor and for the poor.”
All modern popes have emphasized the church’s closeness to the poor and its advocacy for them, based on the Gospel and on the traditions of Catholic social teaching. So Francis was building on the legacy of his predecessors. But Francis made this a hallmark of his ministry from the very beginning. His first trip out of Rome was to the island of Lampedusa, where he celebrated a Mass on a fishing boat that served as a vessel for migrants and had been made into an altar. Solidarity with the poor was a consistent theme of his papacy.
But there was another emphasis on the poor, perhaps subtler, that went largely unnoticed.
In the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, which formed Francis as they have formed countless Jesuits, there is a strange prayer: the retreatant is asked to pray for the desire to follow “Christ poor.” This is not simply an invitation to live simply, or poorly; it is also a desire to place oneself with Christ who suffers insults, out of a desire to be close to him. So an outgrowth of this emphasis on Jesuit poverty is the willingness to suffer insults, which we saw frequently, as Francis was insulted as almost no modern pope has been—including by cardinals, archbishops and bishops, even former close associates. He rarely responded. Throughout his papacy, Francis embraced this more mysterious and less understood form of “poverty” as well.
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/04/21/pope-francis-death-jesuit-obituary-249957
—James Martin, S.J., “Pope Francis never stopped being a Jesuit,” America, April 21, 2025
A Jesuit pope who chose the name of Saint Francis of Assisi—two of many firsts.
Papa Francesco was a Franciscan not just in name but by example. Although he did not imitate the destitution of Il Poverello, he lived simply and advocated for the poor, taking the side of the poor.
Another saint comes to mind who witnessed in this manner—Dorothy Day. They were of the same spirit.
We hope both of them will be canonized, not in a way that co-opts the abuses of the institution (canonization) but rather acts as a witness against it, if that is at all possible.
Canonization in some instances has been adulterated. It has been exploited to propagate partisan ideological agendas not merely questionable but demonstrably not in keeping with the teaching of Christ.
Gonzalinho
LEO XIV
ReplyDeleteCardinal Robert Prevost. He was a papabile. The analysts got it right.
He was a moderate, not left enough to satisfy the conservatives. Leo XIII is most famous for writing the first social encyclical, so Prevost is interested in social justice.
I still miss Francis to tears. I’m surprised at myself.
Gonzalinho
“(3:58) He showed mild support for Fiducia Supplicans…(6:10) on the issue of blessing same-sex couples, according to College of Cardinals reports, it says although…he’s ambiguous, although he expressed reservations about…sympathy for beliefs and practices that contradict the gospel, Cardinal Prevost showed less clarity about Fiducia Supplicans,…stressing the need for national bishops conferences to have…doctrinal authority to interpret and apply such directives in their local contexts, given cultural differences. He therefore did not fully endorse nor reject the document.”
Deletehttps://youtu.be/TyZHUBcbOMc?si=-TNMY9FkDDWzDMoz
—Fr. Mark Goring, “Pope Leo XIV - Everything You Need to Know & Hot Button Issues - Fr. Mark Goring, CC,” YouTube video, 10:34 minutes, May 8, 2025
It’s not identifiable, the College of Cardinals reports that are being referred to here.
According to the reports, Cardinal Prevost on the issue of blessing same-sex couples stressed “the need for national bishops conferences to have a doctrinal authority to interpret and apply such directives in their local contexts, given cultural differences”—sensible, balanced position on a controversial (to say the least) issue, because condemning the practice would have risked goading the German bishops toward schism.
It should be clear at this point in the controversy that Papa Francesco allowed the clergy to bless the persons, not the homosexual relationship.
Gonzalinho
“Some of the most painful losses aren’t just of the people we love, but of the ideas, the visions, the ideals that have set us on fire, inspired, directed, and guided us. Feeling orphaned by them, I have come to understand, can sometimes be just as heavy, if not heavier, to bear.
Delete“I will miss you, Holy Father.”
https://opinion.inquirer.net/183063/farewell-letter-to-pope-francis-a-tribute-to-the-shepherd-who-inspired-us-all
—Fr. Ferdinand Santos, MBA, Ph.D., “Farewell letter to Pope Francis: A tribute to the shepherd who inspired us all,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 8, 2025
We will miss the reformist pope with the exceptionally compassionate heart and beaming smile.
Gonzalinho
PAPA FRANCESCO’S RECORD ON HANDLING THE CLERICAL SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS
ReplyDeleteAnti-abuse advocates commend Francis for grasping the systemic nature of the problem and for meeting empathetically with victims. But they say he struggled to alter the church’s penchant for secrecy and its habit of acting forcefully only when under outside pressure.
What that means, in the aftermath of Francis’s death, is that the next pope will inherit a crisis that is still roiling the Catholic Church.
…The church, with its meticulous recordkeeping, was aware of rampant clerical sexual abuse well before it exploded into public view in the early 2000s. The first revelations emerged primarily in Western countries with strong prosecution services, independent media and advocacy groups. Now, the nature of the crisis is changing, and new regions are training a spotlight on crimes within the church.
…Shaun Dougherty, an American who is the board president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said that abuse “is the single biggest issue in the church today.”
“They are still more willing to protect their church and themselves than the innocent,” he said.
The issue has altered the course of the last three pontificates.
Pope John Paul II, who led the church when the early evidence came to light, tended to view individual priests as the problem, paying less attention to crimes or cover-ups in the hierarchy. That oversight posthumously bruised his reputation, when it emerged that he had known about and overlooked sexual misconduct claims against Theodore McCarrick, a powerful American cardinal who was defrocked in 2019.
John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, moved more aggressively to punish priests and was the first pope to meet with clerical abuse survivors. But he also faced accusations — levied in a 1,900-page report released a year before his death — that he’d mishandled cases during an earlier point in his career. He expressed “profound shame” to abuse victims but admitted no wrongdoing.
…Some critics say that Francis, when not directly confronted with the issue, paid less attention to abuse in his final few years. During a landmark two-year church gathering that ended in 2024, known as a synod, many thorny church issues were discussed. But abuse was not a focus.
“Given that this was the existential crisis to the moral legitimacy to the church around the world, it was a stunning disappointment,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of the watchdog group BishopAccountability.
To be continued
Gonzalinho
PAPA FRANCESCO’S RECORD ON HANDLING THE CLERICAL SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS
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…Francis’s most relevant measures to counter abuse came at the midpoint of his pontificate, when global scandals brought pressure to an unprecedented level. In Chile, prosecutors were raiding church offices and accusing church leaders of a cover-up. In Australia, a cardinal was preparing to stand trial on numerous sex-related offenses. And in the United States, accusations about McCarrick were bubbling to the surface — as the pope promised a canonical trial.
…He subsequently issued a sweeping new law that aimed to create a better system for fielding and investigating abuse claims. As part of that law, dioceses were required to set up offices for receiving complaints. Priests and nuns were obligated for the first time to report accusations of wrongdoing to religious authorities. And, perhaps most importantly, the measures added a new layer of oversight for bishops, who’d previously been answerable only to the pope — meaning they could operate without much scrutiny. Under the new system, bishops could essentially police their own ranks: If one bishop was accused of abuse or a cover-up, a prelate heading the largest regional dioceses could step in and lead an investigation.
…abuse experts, as well as Vatican officials, acknowledge that the church still does not operate with transparency or consistency.
A report issued in October by the pope’s abuse commission noted that not all dioceses have created the offices for receiving cases.
Sometimes the church investigates higher-ups according to its rules. But other cases are improvised, without explanation. Experts say it is hard to tell how well the system is working, because the church does not make public information about which bishops are punished and why.
“We need to work on a consistent application of adhering to the law,” said Hans Zollner, a German priest who helped organize Francis’s abuse summit, and who specializes in safeguarding. “This is the main challenge for the church” when it comes to abuse.
…Victims commonly say they struggle to obtain information about any discipline meted out against their alleged abusers.
Scicluna called that a “fair” criticism.
“If you look at the record of Pope Francis, we are in a better place when it comes to laws and structures,” Scicluna said. “One thing is having laws and structures. Another is how they operate on the ground.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/04/24/pope-francis-abuse-catholic-church/
—Chico Harlan, “The abuse crisis is still roiling the Catholic Church,” The Washington Post, April 24, 2025
To be continued 2
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PAPA FRANCESCO’S RECORD ON HANDLING THE CLERICAL SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS
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…The crisis prompted Francis to take even bolder action to hold the hierarchy accountable for covering up abuse. In 2019, he summoned the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world to the Vatican to impress on them the need to act to prevent abuse and punish offending priests.
He changed church law to remove the “pontifical secret” covering abuse cases and passed a law requiring church personnel to report allegations in-house, although not to police. He approved procedures to investigate bishops who abused or covered up for their pedophile priests, seeking to end the tradition of impunity for the hierarchy.
Ivereigh, the papal biographer, said those reforms were the result of Francis’ learning curve on abuse.
“I think he understood that at the root of the sex abuse crisis was a culture and a mindset which he constantly called clericalism, a sense of entitlement, and which led not only to ultimately to abuse of power and sexual abuse, but its cover up,” Ivereigh said.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pope-francis-troubled-course-on-addressing-clergy-sexual-abuse
—Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, “Pope Francis’ troubled course on addressing clergy sexual abuse,” PBS News, April 23, 2025
To be continued 3
Gonzalinho
PAPA FRANCESCO’S RECORD ON HANDLING THE CLERICAL SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS
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…Within hours of Francis’s death on Monday, survivors of clerical sexual abuse sounded a discordant note amid the lavish tributes. They said the pope failed to fundamentally change the culture of deference that allowed abusers to flourish and failed to deliver decisive action. It was the “tragedy of his papacy”, said one organisation.
…Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) said after Francis’s death on Monday that his papacy “fell short of delivering the decisive action needed”.
Its statement added: “Words without action ring hollow. Under [Francis’s] leadership, the church failed to hold bishops accountable for their roles in enabling, concealing, and perpetuating abuse. Systemic change remained elusive.
“The resignation of a few prelates behind closed doors is no substitute for public accountability. His refusal to remove or discipline those complicit in cover-ups betrayed the church’s moral obligation to protect the vulnerable.”
Snap, the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, said victims and survivors were mourning the “tragedy of [Francis’s] papacy” – children and vulnerable adults who were abused during his tenure.
Shaun Dougherty, Snap’s president, said: “The bishops of the world – including the 137 cardinals who will choose the next pope – collectively possess knowledge of thousands of abusive priests still serving in parishes and schools. A true zero-tolerance policy would mean removing these offenders immediately and holding bishops accountable for keeping them in ministry.”
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the US-based group BishopAccountability, said Francis had “supreme power” but “refused to make the necessary changes”.
Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston lawyer representing hundreds of abuse survivors, told the BBC: “There really hasn’t been any substantive change within the Catholic church. There hasn’t been any transparency. Pope Francis said the right things, he meant the right thing, but the bureaucracy just shut him down.”
There have been fewer scandals and revelations in recent years, but the fury and pain of survivors is undiminished and the repercussions for the church continue to reverberate.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/22/tragedy-child-sexual-abuse-scandal-cast-long-shadow-over-pope-franciss-papacy
—Harriet Sherwood, “Child sexual abuse scandal cast long shadow over Francis’s papacy,” The Guardian, April 22, 2025
To be continued 4
Gonzalinho
PAPA FRANCESCO’S RECORD ON HANDLING THE CLERICAL SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS
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John Paul II refused to face the problem, for example, promoting the late Theodore McCarrick four times. Benedict began to face it, removing Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado from ministry, but never faced the fact that the cover-up was as bad its way as the crime of abuse itself. Francis, with the promulgation of Vos Estis Lux Mundi in 2019, finally established a procedure for holding bishops accountable for covering up sex abuse.
https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/pope-francis-similarities-and-differences-his-predecessors
—Michael Sean Winters, “Pope Francis: Similarities and differences with his predecessors,” National Catholic Reporter, April 23, 2025
In major contrast to his two predecessors, Papa Francesco was the first to recognize and acknowledge that the clerical sexual abuse crisis was systemically based and to take structural steps to address it. He correctly put his finger on clericalism, which is an attitude of clerical entitlement, not only among clergy and religious but also the laity, who represent the vast majority of the Church population, as one outstanding factor among the principal causes of the abuse. However, his reforms, commendably structural and progressive, were not entirely effectual, so that his critics rightly faulted them for being partial and unfinished. Possibly more than his two predecessors, he showed a heart for the victims, despite the fact that all three could hardly be considered faultless in dealing with the crisis and cannot entirely absolve themselves of their own particular failings.
One of the controlling roots of the crisis is the power asymmetry in the Church that is susceptible to abuse because of clericalism, a deeply entrenched attitude in the Church. Clericalism is a leading cause of abuse, among other gaps and deficiencies.
Clericalism is the culprit underlying a related form of abuse, spiritual abuse, also pernicious in the Church. Notably, the Church has hardly begun to acknowledge the reality of spiritual abuse, much less to address it.
The direction for Church reform in response to abuse has suggested by a recent scholarly article, sharply analytical, about the subject of clerical sexual abuse.
“It could be argued that a dialogue and a true adaptation to modern values, such as self-determination, for the Catholic Church is [necessary, but it] will not be easy. The Church cannot in fact ignore nor completely eliminate the conceptual framework it has built on modernity over the centuries, but in order for the dialogue to be real and constructive, it should concretely get rid of some legacies of the past that are no longer welcome and accepted by secular societies, such as the bunker mentality, clericalism and the unappealable defense of its members. Unless the Church changes its vision and reshapes its attitude, the problem of sexual abuse will probably have no end.”
https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/media/pdf/article/journal-of-modern-and-contemporary-christianity/2022/1/art-10.30687-JoMaCC--2022-01-005.pdf
—Sophia Rita Jadda, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia, “The Catholic Church Sex Abuse Crisis: The Rhetoric of Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis,” Journal of Modern and Contemporary Christianity (April 2022) 1(1):127-56
Ecclesia semper reformanda est.
Gonzalinho
PAROCHIAL CATHOLICISM
ReplyDeleteWhile traditionalist Europeans and U.S. conservatives embraced his predecessor Benedict XVI’s view of Islam as non- or irrational, Francis had always advocated an openness to multicultural faith expressions and even interreligious dialogue. In 2019 he collaborated with Al-Azhar University’s Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, an Egyptian scholar of Islam, to do just that, producing a document denouncing “religious extremism, national extremism and also intolerance” and emphasizing that “pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom.”
Such an outward embrace of multiculturalism became a principal point of tension between the traditionalists and a pope who had long championed a “Theology of the People” that emphasized popular religiosity. That conflict came to a head at the Amazon Synod, a meeting in Rome of bishops from across South America, in October 2019. At a ceremony, Francis blessed an indigenous statue of a woman with child that a missionary said represented “Our Lady of the Amazon.” To his enemies, Francis’s decision to honor what they accused of being a pagan symbol—an indigenous pagan symbol, no less—was a bridge too far, an encapsulation of the dangerously modern, anti-Catholic world the pope had brought into being.
Among those entering the fray was Burke, who joined with the right-wing Brazilian group Tradition, Family, and Property to oppose the incident. Weeks later, at the Vatican, one of the group’s followers, the ultra-right Austrian activist Alexander Tschugguel, seized two indigenous statues—one of them the figure Francis had blessed in October—and threw them into the Tiber River. In an interview, Tschugguel thanked U.S. Catholics, many of whom had praised his theft, for serving as a “backbone” for likeminded Europeans.
…Viganò re-emerged to accuse the Vatican of participating in part of a globalist conspiracy to impose a world government through vaccine mandates. José Gomez, head of the U.S. bishops, openly bucked Francis’s call to make the faith less partisan by issuing a blistering statement against Joe Biden on Inauguration Day 2021—a document so incendiary it triggered Vatican intervention to prevent it from coming out on the bishops’ letterhead. (Undeterred, Gomez went out of his way later that year to brand Black Lives Matter as a “pseudo-religion” and threat to Catholicism.)
Francis had had enough. In 2021, he heavily restricted the use of traditionalists’ preferred Latin Mass, arguing that liturgical diversity had been used to politically undermine important precepts of the Second Vatican Council. In 2023, he removed Strickland from his post and installed a close Argentine confident at the Vatican’s chief doctrinal office. And he capped off the year with one of his most controversial orders yet: a proposal to bless gay couples, if not their marriages, that enraged traditionalists (and even a few moderates).
Still, for all his efforts, Francis could never quite fully reshape the U.S. Church, which in the first months of Trump’s second presidency seems ready to fully shrug off any traces of his influence in favor of a closed-off, parochial nationalism. He promoted U.S. bishops aligned with his vision, including to the College of Cardinals, the body that has elected his successor, but was slow to replace retiring ones. As a result, Francis-aligned bishops have consistently lost strategic votes within the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
To be continued
Gonzalinho
PAROCHIAL CATHOLICISM
DeleteContinued
By 2024, the reactionary fervor gripping much of the Catholic right was taking its conservative media stars further down the rabbit hole. Last May Robert Barron, the ultra-famous bishop whose YouTube channel commands nearly 2 million subscribers, hosted an hourlong interview with Deneen, listening approvingly as he discussed the work of the reactionaries Louis de Bonald, Louis Billot, and Juan Donoso Cortés—figures, neither of the men cared to mention, who were some of the ideological pillars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic antisemitism. After the interview, Barron posted the exchange to Twitter. “The Church,” he declared, “must now read the signs of the times and be willing to examine and critique liberal democracy.” Recently, both Barron and Dolan, the New York cardinal, have joined a presidential commission on religious liberty chaired by Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick and former Trump cabinet member Ben Carson, where they will be joined by Franklin Graham, son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, and right-wing author Eric Metaxas.
As a whole, though, the cardinals seem set to follow Francis’s steadfast championing of “encounter” in a world of ever-growing walls by electing Prevost, a binational cardinal born in the United States who has spent much of his life in Peru. …Bannon called Leo’s selection the product of an “anti-Trump vote” from “the globalists that run the Curia.” Even in welcoming Leo, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board took a swipe at his predecessor’s willingness to challenge inequality, dismissing him as an uninformed Global South voice blind to economic common sense. The new pontiff, the editorial hoped, would not be “hostile to free markets, as the best way to alleviate poverty and much suffering,” in contrast to Francis, who “believed that the corruption he saw in Argentina was called capitalism.”
Such charges will not possibly land with a Chicago-born-and-raised pope. The question is whether Leo is willing to use his Americanness as protection in order to go on the offensive. Will he rein in the U.S. Catholics who believe they are holier than both their own bishops and those in the countries whose immigrants they revile? Some of his pre-election social media posts show a willingness to criticize the Trump administration’s rollbacks of immigrants’ rights, but that was back when he was a cardinal: how outspoken he will be as a pope remains to be seen. Francis blazed the path to a more global and welcoming Catholicism; Leo XIV must decide if he will continue to walk it.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-migrant-pope/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=5ca8aadb72-ourlatest_5_15_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-5ca8aadb72-41042125&mc_cid=5ca8aadb72&mc_eid=bf582c06cd
—Travis Knoll, “The Migrant Pope,” Boston Review, May 15, 2025
Catholicism is not a unitary construct. There are varieties of Catholicism. It takes a sophisticated mind to appreciate this reality. Unfortunately, a fundamentalist bigotry would reduce a mammoth religion of billions to its own purist varietal.
Gonzalinho