Vatican City, May 31, 2018 / 12:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a letter to Catholics in Chile on Thursday, Pope Francis said he is ashamed of the Church’s failure to listen to victims, and urged all the baptized to make a commitment to ending the culture of abuse and cover-up.
“Here resides one of our main faults and omissions: not knowing how to listen to victims,” the pope said in his May 31 letter.
Because of this inability to listen, “partial conclusions were drawn, which lacked crucial elements for a healthy and clear discernment,” he said, adding that “with shame I must say that we did not know how to listen and react in time.”
The need to investigate the Chilean abuse crisis, he said, “was born when we saw that there were situations that we did not know how to see and hear. As a Church we could not continue to walk ignoring the pain of our brothers.”
Francis stressed the importance of prayer and the role that the People of God have in the Church, saying that to distance oneself from the People of God “hastens us to the desolation and perversion of ecclesial nature.”
“The fight against a culture of abuse requires renewing this certainty,” he said, and urged all Christians not to be afraid of being protagonists of change in the Church.
Francis then thanked the organizations and media outlets which he said took on the issue, “always seeking the truth and not making this painful reality a meditative source for increasing the rating of their programming.”
He also said the process of purification the Church is currently living is due not just to recent events, but the whole process is possible thanks to the effort and perseverance of those who, “against all hope and stains of discredit,” did not tire of seeking the truth.
“I am referring to the victims of abuses of sexuality, power and authority and to those who in this moment believe and accompany them. Victims whose cry rose to heaven,” he said, voicing gratitude for the “courage and perseverance” they have shown.
The “never more” attitude in front of a culture of abuse and the system of cover-up, he said, “demands working among everyone in order to generate a culture of care which permeates our ways of relating, praying, thinking, of living authority; our customs and languages and our relationship with power and money.”
Pope Francis then stressed the urgency of generating spaces where a culture of abuse and concealment is not the “dominant scheme,” and in which a critical and questioning attitude is not confused with “betrayal.”
He then urged all Christians, especially those who work in educational and formational entities and institutions, to pool their resources with civil society in order to find strategic ways of promoting a culture of care and protection.
Abuse and cover-up, he said, are “incompatible with the logic of the Gospel since the salvation offered by Christ is always an offer, a gift which demands and requires freedom,” adding that all attempts against freedom and the integrity of the person “are anti-evangelical.”
The pope then invited centers of religious formation, faculties of theology, and seminaries to launch a theological reflection capable of rising above the present time and promoting a “mature, adult” faith in the Church.
Communities that are able to fight against abuse and which are internally capable of discussion and even confrontation on the issue are welcome, he said, adding that “we will be fruitful in the measure that we empower and open communities from within and thus free ourselves from closed and self-referential thoughts full of promises and mirages which promise life but which ultimately favor the culture of abuse.”
Referring the popular piety practiced in many communities in Chile, which he called an “invaluable treasure and authentic school of the heart for the people of God,” Francis said that in his experience, expressions of popular devotion are “one of the few places where the People of God are sovereign” from the influence of a clericalism which tries to control and limit the laity.
Francis then pointed to all the laity, priests, bishops, and consecrated persons in Chile who have faithfully lived their vocations in love, saying they are Christians who know how to cry with others, to seek justice, and to look with mercy on those who are suffering.
Pope Francis closed his letter saying a Church that is wounded is capable of understanding and being moved by the wounds of today’s world and of both making these wounds their own and accompanying and healing those who bear them.
“A Church with sores does not put itself at the center, it does not believe itself to be perfect, it does not try to conceal and disguise its evil, but puts it before the only one who can heal wounds and who has a name: Jesus Christ.”
This certainty is what will prompt people to look for the commitment to ultimately and in time generate a culture where every person “has the right to breathe an air free of every kind of abuse.”
He urged the entire People of God not to be afraid to get involved and walk, driven by the Holy Spirit in search of a Church “which is increasingly more synodal, prophetic and hopeful,” and which is ultimately “less abusive because it knows to put Jesus at the center in the hungry, in the prisoner, in the migrant, in the abused.”
Francis’ letter coincided with the start of the pope’s second round of meetings with Chilean abuse survivors.
The group, consisting of five priests and two laypersons who suffered either sexual abuse or abuse of power or conscience by Karadima, and two priests who have accompanied the victims, will be in Rome over the weekend to discuss the country’s abuse crisis with the pope.
Francis’ letter comes after a months-long process of addressing the Chilean abuse crisis following an in-depth investigation carried out by Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta and Msgr. Jordi Bertomeu, from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.
The investigation was initially centered around Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, appointed to the diocese in 2015 and accused by at least one victim of covering up abuses of Fr. Fernando Karadima.
In 2011, Karadima was convicted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of abusing minors and sentenced to a life of prayer and solitude. Allegations of cover-up were also made against three other bishops – Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic and Horacio Valenzuela – whom Karadima’s victims accuse of knowing about Karadima’s crimes and failing to act.
Pope Francis initially defended Barros, saying he had received no evidence of the bishop’s guilt, and called accusations against him “calumny” during a trip to Chile in January. However, after receiving Scicluna’s report, Francis apologized in an April 8 letter to the Chilean bishops, and asked to meet the prelates and more outspoken survivors in person.
A few weeks, later, Francis held both private and group meetings with three of Karadima’s most outspoken victims – Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Andres Murillo – at the Vatican April 27-29.
Two weeks later, the pope met with all of Chile’s active bishops in Rome, some of whom have also been accused of cover-up, to discuss the conclusions of Scicluna’s report and to share his own reflections on the crisis.
During the May 15-17 meeting, Francis criticized the 34 bishops present for systematic cover-up of clerical abuse in Chile, and urged them to refocus, putting Christ at the center of their mission.
The gathering concluded with all of Chile’s active bishops offering a written resignation to Francis, which he will either accept or deny. So far, there has been no news of the pope’s decision.
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When are we going to hear from the five German bishops who are not on board with this racket?
While Pope Francis’ decries against the German Synodal Way, there doesn’t appear to be a remarkable difference with the subject matter considered for ‘pastoral advancement’ with the papal endorsed Synod on Synodality.
Except for forum, at non prejudicial glance one appears to provide a ‘template’, as a distinguished observer remarked for the other. So what’s the point? It does appear to draw interest away, for example the Nordic bishops’ complaints from the great Synod to the lesser German Synod’s like doctrinal transgressions. Or, is the ‘Dirty Schism’ [NatCathRegister] of Der Synodale Weg more dirty?
If the purpose of the anomaly is also to provide a convenient goat to assuage feelings of distrust, impotence, perhaps guilt as the great Synod seems on the verge of careening off the cliff dragging the Church with it then it may have purpose.
The Vatican continues to talk around this subject and not address it head on, as it should. In point of fact they should have stepped up long ago, before things got to this point. The German Bishops should be called in, told their position is invalid and heretical,and informed they must recant or they will be excommunicated. At that point they can be whatever flavor of Christianity they wish, but they and their followers will no longer be Catholic. Continuing to let them poison the church in the way they have been doing is cowardly and dishonest. Its astonishing to me that Francis refuses to exert his authority in this area. Someone else will always be willing to step into a power vacuum and in this case,with the German Bishops, thats extraordinarily dangerous for the future of the church. The suggestion has been the Pope secretly supports these radical liberal moves, his statements about homosexuality always having been problematic and coy at best. Funny that the Pope has no issue hammering down devout supporters of the Latin Mass but when it comes to protecting the REAL beliefs and morality of church teaching, he cannot find his voice. If at his current age and state of health he is unable to appropriately fill his role as the leader of the church in order to protect it, it may be time for him to follow Benedict’s lead and retire.In any case, something must be done very soon before the situation goes any farther.
I think it’s safe to say that Pope Francis either supports the radicals, or that he is a culpably gullible leader who witlessly surrounds himself with sycophants, hacks, heretics, predators and people who cover for predators.
The Synod on Synodality’s aim is to make sure the Synodal Way “does not end badly in some way, but is also integrated into the Church.”
And that’s…good?
Calling the Synodal Way “ideological” is a statement so broad and vague – especially coming from Pope Francis – that it means practically nothing. If he believes the Synod on Synodality will somehow set right the nonsense coming out of Germany (and elsewhere), he should read the Working Document. The Holy Spirit is no excuse for magical thinking.
Wondering if Germania serves as a decoy?
Cardinal Marx’s resignation should have been accepted when it was offered, or even if it had not been offered. Also his red hat. Very hard to stop the train after letting it leave the station.
The best way to curb novelties in Germania and elsewhere might be to remove Luxembourg’s Cardinal Hollerich from the tautological/echo-chamber Synod on Synodality, and to replace Cardinal Radcliffe (as in rad!) as the subliminal message-master. Drain the swamp.