Vatican City, Feb 15, 2018 / 05:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a conversation with Jesuits during his recent visit to Peru, Pope Francis said he regularly meets with victims of sexual abuse on Fridays, and that while the percentage of priests who abuse is relatively low, even one is too many.
When it comes to sexual abuse, if you look at the statistics, roughly “70 percent of pedophiles are in the family environment, acquaintances. Then in gyms, at the pool,” the Pope said in a conversation with Peruvian Jesuits, published Feb. 15.
The meeting took place Jan. 19 after a courtesy visit to Peruvian President Pedro Kuczynski during a three-day visit to the country, which was part of a wider, Jan. 15-21 visit to South America.
“The percentage of pedophiles that are Catholic priests doesn’t reach 2 percent, it’s around 1.6 percent. So it’s not a lot,” he said. However, Francis stressed that “it’s terrible even if it were just one of our brothers!”
“God anointed them for the sanctification of children and adults, and he, instead of sanctifying them, has destroyed them. It’s horrible!” he said, and underlined the importance of listening to victims and hearing directly about the suffering they’ve undergone.
To this end, he said he regularly meets with victims of abuse on Fridays, and “their process is so difficult, they are annihilated. They are annihilated!”
For the Church, abuse is “a great humiliation,” he said. “It shows not only our fragility, but also, let’s say it clearly, our level of hypocrisy.”
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke confirmed the news about the Friday meetings, saying in a Feb. 15 statement that “several times a month” Pope Francis meets with victims of sexual abuse either individually or in groups.
Pope Francis, he said, “listens to the victims and tries to help them heal the serious wounds caused by the abuses they’ve undergone. The meetings are held with the utmost privacy, in respect of the victims and their suffering.”
The Pope’s comments were made to Peruvian Jesuits during his recent Jan. 15-21 visit to Chile and Peru. He met privately with Jesuits in both countries, taking questions from attendees and listening to their concerns.
The conversations, published in Jesuit journal La Civilta’ Cattolica, touched on a variety of issues, and included his discussion with both the Chilean and Peruvian Jesuits. Both Chile and Peru are currently at the center of two major, high-profile cases of sexual abuse, carried out by a Chilean priest and a Peruvian layman.
Francis met privately with abuse victims in Chile, and spoke openly about the tragedy in his Jan. 18 meeting with priest and religious in the country. His comments on abuse were made in response to a question posed by a Peruvian Jesuit about how to handle sex abuse, and whether he had any encouragement to give.
Speaking to the some 100 Jesuits present for the Jan. 19 encounter, Francis responded to the question saying sex abuse is “the greatest desolation that the Church is undergoing.”
He recalled a time when was returning home after hearing the confessions of Carmelite nuns on Argentina’s March 24 “Plaza de Mayo” celebration, which commemorates all those who were “disappeared” during the country’s military dictatorship.
After getting off the metro, Francis said he saw a couple with a young toddler walking down the street. When the child started to run in his direction, the father immediately yelled for the child to come back, and to “watch out for the pedophiles.”
“What shame I underwent! What shame!” Pope Francis said. “They didn’t realize that I was the archbishop, I was a priest, and what shame!”
He noted that often times abuse, particularly in new and flourishing communities, is linked to corruption, citing three types of abuse which often go together.
“Abuse in these congregations is always the result of a mentality linked to power, which must be healed at its evil roots,” he said, explaining that the various communities undergoing scandals generally all suffer from a deadly trio of “abuse of authority – with which it means to mix the internal and external forum – sexual abuse, and economic messes.”
Noting how both he and Benedict XVI have had to “suppress” various communities, such as the Legionaries of Christ, Francis said there are “many painful cases,” and that this phenomenon has also affected new and prosperous congregations, most notably the Peruvian-born Sodalitium Christianae Vitae.
In cases like this, “money is always in the middle,” he said, adding that “the devil enters through the wallet.”
According to St. Ignatius, one of the first steps of temptation is for wealth, he said. “Then come vanity and pride, but first there is wealth. In the new congregations that have fallen into this problem of abuse these three levels are also found together.”
However, citing the Ignatian spiritual exercises, the Pope said the shame experienced can also be a grace, and urged his fellow Jesuits to accept these experiences “as a grace and be deeply ashamed,” because “we must love the Church with her wounds.”
Though spoken beforehand, the Pope’s comments have been made public at a time when he’s currently under fire for his reaction to accusations of abuse cover-up on the part of Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, Chile.
Appointed to head the Osorno diocese by Pope Francis in 2015, Barros is accused of both witnessing and covering the abuse of his longtime friend Fr. Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty of abuse in 2011. Barros has repeatedly denied these claims.
Opposition to Barros and his appointment has been relentless since his installment in 2015. Pope Francis faced major blow-back during his visit to Chile for saying the accusations were unfounded, and amounted to “calumny.”
On his flight back to Rome Francis apologized for the comment, saying he had intended to say that there was not enough evidence to convict Barros of cover-up, and that no victims had come forward with information that could prove the Chilean prelate’s guilt.
Shortly after the visit, Francis tapped Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, the Vatican’s top man in clerical abuse appeals cases, to go to Santiago hear victims’ testimonies. The trip also includes a stop in New York to speak with one of Karadima’s most high-profile victims, Juan Carlos Cruz, who has been among the most vocal opponents of Barros.
After Scicluna’s appointment, reports came out indicating that before Barros’ appointment in 2015 Cruz had sent an 8-page letter detailing Karadima’s abuse to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, alleging that Barros had not only witnessed his abuse and the abuse of others, but had at times participated and covered it up.
According to reports, members of the commission had given the letter to the commission’s president, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who is said to have presented it to the Pope, raising questions as to whether Francis had read it and was aware of Cruz’s testimony before naming Barros to Osorno.
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It could very well be that the Chinese are interpreting the agreement broadly in an open way according to their sense of it. Meaning they think what they’re doing is right that helps their cause -box in Catholicism and deny it more and more and spread Sinicization. They can thereby provide more openings and space to the Holy See/Vatican, to do the dialogue lifestyle that it/they are announcing from its/their own side. (Sorry.)
The appointment of the bishop without the Holy See’s participation would just be an incidental flap.
It could be that the scene that has come into being is worse than that. Such that where instead of the Holy See/Vatican being somewhat blinded to it in a naievty, it/they are actually interested to acquiescing in the Sinicization and willing to accept the boxing-in of the faith so that it/they can profess novelties from its/their own side.
Again the appointment of the bishop without the Holy See’s participation would just be an incidental flap.
Why is/are the Holy See/Vatican complaining in public about the appointment when the terms of the Provisional Agreement are secret and the bishop will be doing the same types of things -Sinicization- that the other patriotic bishops do that the Holy See/Vatican approves of in those appointments?
It could be said that the complaining in public is legalistic but non-formalistic yet has a good intention to smell like the sheep and not insult the faith of the CPC or the worldliness of the non-clericalist patriotic bishops; however, making the observation would not advance anyone’s understanding or give sense to sorting out the vagaries at work.
This is simple. The Chinese regime will press the limits of everything it believes is in their interests. Period.
Duh!
Breaking news – China broke an agreement!!
This just in – The sun rose in the east!!
Film at 11.
Rule #1: Don’t dialogue with the devil. He always lies. Shame on the Vatican for not condemning the incarceration of Cardinal zen who begged the pope not to negotiate with the CCC.
Occasional protest by the Vatican, whether it’s about Church suffocating China policy, Pope Francis’ letter of admonition to the German Synodal way, his recent disregard of the Synodal way visit to the Vatican, abortion described as hiring a hit man – has no significance insofar as what must be considered papal policy that actually supports: a Marxist socialist Church in China, the Synodal way agenda to normalize same sex, women priests, and abortion rights.
Papal appointments, suggestions, lack of serious intervention to correct these errors within the Church in Germany, its doctrinal distortion within China, throughout the universal Church are viable evidence of complicity. Unlike secular institutions the Church leadership may not restructure, modify its mission eliminating what Christ revealed. This is true primarily with the Roman pontiff, who is obliged by the description of his Office, the Chair of Peter, to correct this subversion of Apostolic doctrine and its practice.
Intransigence by the Vatican to correct this apostasy is unfortunately accommodated by the intransigence of lower ranked clergy bishops presbyters deacons to effectively respond, as did Fr Thomas Weinandy OFM Cap in his 2017 letter to Francis clearly outlining the serious issues related to his papacy. We, especially clergy, are not free of the moral responsibility to address this dilemma from the pulpit and any other amenable means.
Where I say “papal policy that actually supports” I don’t refer to explicit Vatican support of CCP policy toward the Church, rather a variation of support more in line with a less than faith inspired accommodation.
I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
After the Vatican took such pains to signal their total and complete supineness before the Chinese dragon, China treated them with the contempt due a spineless and pusillanimous non-entity!
Who could have ever predicted it?
(Sigh.)
Jesus deserves so much better.
It’s not like the Vatican cares. Bergoglio and McCarrick knew fully that they were betraying Chinese Catholics. A Communist is less trustworthy than a druggie.