Cardinal Sean reflects on Pope's Benedict's visit, meeting with clergy abuse victims

On his blog, Cardinal Seán shares his reflections & experiences of the Pope's visit (April 25, 2008):

Then planning a papal visit, so many things can go wrong — and when you are Irish, you expect all of them to go wrong! It was so beautiful that everything — even the weather — cooperated. The Holy Father’s visit was very uplifting and a grace-filled moment for the Catholics of our country.

The Holy Father had announced that his message was going to be “Christ our Hope,” and it certainly has given all of us a lot of hope in the Lord and in the future of our Church.

As I already mentioned in last week’s blog, a very special moment for me and for the Archdiocese of Boston took place on Thursday when the Holy Father met with five survivors of clergy sexual abuse.

The following day, on the day of the Holy Father’s anniversary, the other American cardinals and I had a wonderful opportunity to have dinner with him in the residence of the nuncio to the Vatican mission to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore. I want to share with you that at that event, the Holy Father told me how moved he was by that meeting with the victims the day before.

Cardinal O'Malley was also interviewed by the Diocesian newspaper The Pilot, where he spoke more of the circumstances of the Pope's meeting:

Q: Can you explain your involvement in that unannounced meeting in Washington that brought together the Holy Father with five local victims of sexual abuse by clergy?

A: After it was announced that the Holy Father was going to Washington and New York and that Boston was not included, the bishops of the region joined me in writing a letter to the Holy Father asking him to reconsider and talking about the pastoral needs that we have in New England. Then the response came back that, given the very taxing nature of the trip, that they (Vatican officials) really hesitated to add anything else. So I wrote back again asking if the Holy Father would meet with victims and after that the Holy Father responded and asked me to make the necessary arrangements.

Q: Why was this meeting not part of the official schedule?

A: We did our best to keep it a very discreet meeting because we did not want to turn it a media circus and we were afraid that if people found ahead of time that that was just what would happen. Also, some of the survivors who accompanied us wished to remain anonymous and it would have made it impossible for them to participate under the public scrutiny. So, I am just thankful that we were able to carry it off without becoming public before hand.

I was very grateful to the Holy Father. The many times he addressed the sexual abuse crisis indicate how deeply he understands the situation of our Church and what happens here. He obviously feels a great sorrow over what has happened and that he is ashamed but, at the same time, wants to encourage us on the path to healing and reconciliation.

At the Thursday morning Mass at the Nationals’ stadium he talked about the need of giving pastoral care to the victims, and then in the afternoon he gave us a very concrete example of that in his own encounter with them.

Q: Why do you think this was a crucial meeting?

A: I think it was important for the victims to feel as though they had access to the Holy Father. Obviously, not all victims but someone representing them and in a small enough group, in a context that it would allow for a very personal interchange between the Holy Father and the victims. It was not a formal address; the Holy Father made his initial comments and then he spoke with each of the victims individually, he clasped their hands, he blessed them, he prayed with them.

I think for the Holy Father, pastorally, it was very important to experience this. Certainly he has heard through the bishops and through others the devastation of sexual abuse but it is another thing to encounter personally the survivors and to learn first hand of their suffering and pain.

John Allen Jr. devotes his weekly column to substantial "behind the scenes" coverage of the Pope's meeting with the victims, concluding with another interview with Cardinal O'Malley.

Related

• Victims of abuse recall meeting with pope - Patricia Rice interviews the partipants in Benedict's meeting with the abuse victims. St. Louis Platform April 23, 2008.

Pope's visit prompts new claims of clergy abuse

Pope visit prompts new claims of abuse by priests, by Steve Ritea. Newsday April 21, 2008:

The pope's visit and his acknowledging sexual abuse by priests within the church has prompted dozens of people to come forward and claim they were molested as children, the president of a victim support group said yesterday.

"We've been inundated with calls," said Barbara Blaine, president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a national organization. "Several are saying that they never told anyone."

Any media coverage of the issue often prompts new people to come forward, Blaine said, noting several hundred calls her organization received in 2002, when America's Catholic bishops approved a toughened sex abuse policy after scores of molestation charges against priests became public.

In his address to the nation's Catholic bishops Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI said that the sexual abuse scandal had been "very badly handled." The pope met later with victims of clergy sexual abuse, in a historic visit.

Teaching by example: Pope Benedict meets victims of clergy sex abuse

On Thursday, Pope Benedict also met privately with victims of clergy sexual abuse. John Allen, Jr. reports:

In an unexpected and essentially unprecedented move, Pope Benedict XVI met quietly with five victims of clerical sexual abuse this afternoon at the Vatican’s embassy to the United States, located in Washington, D.C.

Prior to this afternoon, no pope had ever met with victims of sexual abuse by priests. That omission has been oft-cited by critics of the church’s response to the crisis as an indication that Rome and the papacy are out of touch with American realities, or in denial about the magnitude of the problem.

All five victims who met with Pope Benedict today are from the Boston area, and sources told NCR that Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston played a role in arranging their encounter with Pope Benedict. In the end, however, those sources say, it was the pope’s choice to take the meeting.

Allen goes on to discuss the demands for reform made by David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, but adds:

... the pope’s forceful language, coupled with today’s meeting, is likely to at least diminish impressions that the pope is “out of touch” with the American situation.

Expectations created by the pope’s language, some observers say, could also make it more difficult for church officials to resist pressure for transparency, including the full disclosure of relevant documents related to allegations of sexual abuse, in the future.

Additional Commentary

• From the New York Times, Fr. James Martin says "I had a prayer answered today":

  Since 2002, in my prayers, meditations and discussions about the sex abuse crisis, I’ve often returned to thoughts about the healing power of ritual. Besides the necessary concrete remedies (making financial restitution to the victims, removing and disciplining abusive priests and the bishops who moved around those priests, and setting up guidelines for safer environments for children, for example), I’ve often wondered if symbolic gestures could help encourage the process of healing victims and their families.

• "Unfiltered access" -- Victims of abuse by clergy members talk to CNN's Campbell Brown about their meeting with the pope. April 17, 2008. "I went to Rome in 2003 wanting this meeting, and now I finally got it"; "He seemed to intrinsically understand what we were talking about."

David Gibson on the "genesis" of Ratzinger's concern over clergy sex abuse

According to David Gibson (Benedictions), the genesis of his statements went back to a meeting that took place more than four years ago, not with other bishops, but with leaders of the lay review board set up to keep an eye on how the American hierarchy was complying with their own guidelines:

[Following the termination of Frank Keating], a well-respected Chicago jurist, Anne Burke, was then named to lead the blue-ribbon panel of 13 lay leaders, and while she was more politic in public, she found it tough going as she tried to arrange meetings with various bishops about the issue. She got nowhere, and in frustration, Burke and other board members started calling and faxing various Vatican offices asking if they could fly over, at their own expense, to meet with them. A few offices responded, among them the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

In January 2004, Burke and several other board members met with Ratzinger and his aides in his offices, for a full two-and-a-half hours. They set out the scope and depth of the scandal, which Ratzinger (and other Vatican officials) said they had not known. The U.S. bishops, Burke said, weren't giving the Vatican the full story. Ratzinger listened attentively, and at the end of the meeting stood up and promised the lay leaders he would get back to them. His time and response was something that one of the cardinal's top aides told Burke was very unusual.

“Cardinal Ratzinger was far more open to meeting with members of the national review board than our own bishops and cardinals,” Burke later told Newsday. Burke said Ratzinger was very engaged in the topic, beyond the fact that his department was charged with dealing with most cases to determine whether a priest should be defrocked, or “laicized” in church terms. “He took in everything we had to say and answered our questions. And we pulled no punches: We told him what was going on in terms of the extent of the actual abuse by the priests and about our dismay with the U.S. church hierarchy." ... Read More)

Pope Benedict speaks on the sexual abuse crisis

En route to the United States, Pope Benedict took the opportunity to field questions from the reporters. John Allen, Jr. asked the Holy Father of his thoughts on the clergy abuse scandals that have beset the Catholic Church in America in recent years:

John Allen: Holy Father, I’ll ask my question in English. I know you will speak principally in Italian, but we would be grateful for at least a few words in English. The Catholic church in the United States is large and dynamic, but also suffering, above all because of the recent sexual abuse crisis. The American people are waiting to hear what you have to say on this subject. What will your message be?

Pope Benedict XVI: It is a great suffering for the church in the United States, for the church in general, and for me personally that this could happen. If I read the histories of these victims, it’s difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing and to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed, and we will do all that is possible that this cannot happen in the future.

I think we have to act on three levels.

The first is the level of justice, the juridical level. We now have also norms to react in a just way. I would not speak in this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, [which] is another thing. We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry, this is absolutely incompatible. And who is really guilty of being a pedophile cannot be a priest. So the first level is, as we can do justice and help clearly the victims, because they are deeply touched. So [there are] two sides of justice, on the one hand that pedophiles cannot be priests; on the other hand, to help in all the possible ways to the victims.

The second level is the pastoral level, the level of healing and help of assistance and of reconciliation. This is a big pastoral engagement, and I know that the bishops and the priests and all the Catholic people in the United States will do all possible to help assist and to heal, and to help that in the future these things cannot happen.

The third point [is that] we have made a visitation in the seminaries to also do what is possible in the education of seminarians for a deep, spiritual, human and intellectual formation –with discernment so that only sound persons can be admitted to the priesthood, only persons with a deep personal love for Christ and a deep sacramental love, to exclude that this can happen [again]. I know that the bishops and the rectors of seminarians will do all that is possible so that we have a strong discernment, because it’s more important to have good priests than to have many priests. This is also our third level, and we hope that we can do, and we have done, and we will do in the future, all that is possible to heal this wound.

Reactions / Related

• "A Pope Ashamed, Lawyers Aside", by Alejandro Bermudez. New York Times "A Papal Discussion":

  The sex scandal in the Catholic Church seems to be a never-ending story.

  But if someone is capable of bringing this to some kind of closure it’s the Pope. Not only because he has the authority, but because he has given the only truly effective response the Catholic Church can provide to this painful issue: conversion. A key Catholic word that’s usually looked down upon, conversion means repentance, reparation and a 180-degree change. ...

• Fr. James Martin on "The Church’s Shame, and the Priesthood":

  Why would anyone want to be a priest after the abuse crisis? Who would want to join an organization like the Catholic Church, much less represent it publicly? How could someone still hear the “call”? What will the church do without priests? ...

• Pope fails to placate abuse victims, by Ian Urbina and Abby Goodnough. International Herald Tribune April 16, 2008.

Cardinal O'Malley - Benedict's visit will be a "call for reconciliation and healing"

In an interview with the Boston Herald, Cardinal O'Malley addresses Benedict's visit and the clergy abuse crisis:

“The mistakes of the past must be avoided,” O’Malley told the Herald yesterday, four days before he will leave to greet Benedict in Washington , D.C. “I’m sure the Holy Father’s message will be along those lines . . . a call for reconciliation and for a desire to bring people together and to call people to healing.” [...]

Some speculated that Benedict isn’t visiting Boston because it would shine a spotlight on that ugly scandal, but O’Malley said Benedict’s age and the sheer number of requests he receives played more of a role.

O’Malley said he has no doubt Benedict will address that painful chapter in American Catholicism.

“The Holy Father is very aware of the situation in the United States . . . so I was certain that whether he came to Boston or not, he would certainly address this very important issue,” he said. “He knows our situation, our pastoral needs, so of course he would want to speak to us about these very important issues in our lives.”

Cardinal Bertone: Pope Benedict will address the clergy sex abuse crisis

VATICAN CITY (AP) _ Pope Benedict XVI recognizes the damage and pain caused by the clergy sex abuse crisis and will seek to heal wounds during his U.S. trip next week, the Vatican’s No. 2 official said Tuesday.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview with The Associated Press, said Benedict will deliver a message of “trust and hope” when he meets American clergy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

Benedict “will try to open the path of healing and reconciliation,” said Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

The abuse crisis has caused “so much suffering for the victims, for the families of the victims and above all to the church because it was a contradiction with the great educational mission of the church,” Bertone lamented during the 30-minute interview in the frescoed Treaty Hall of the Apostolic Palace.

Bertone also spoke of Benedict's address to the United Nations and message to the American people:

Bertone said “the dignity of the human being” will be at the center of Benedict’s U.N. address, linking the visit to the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Asked what impact the speech might have on U.S. policy, the Italian cardinal noted that “the United States shares the ideals of the United Nations.”

The theme of the trip, “Christ our Hope” is a reflection that Benedict is “not a pessimistic pope,” Bertone said.

He noted the importance of religion in American life and the Catholic Church in America. While the pope is aware that Catholics in the United States and elsewhere in the world stray from church teaching, the cardinal said, Benedict wants his pilgrimage to give his flock “reason for faith and for hope.”

(Via Gary Stern @ Blogging Religiously).