When Pope Francis ended his half-hour meeting on Sunday with victims who had been sexually abused by clergy when they were children, he reiterated his commitment that they would be treated with justice.
Then, as the meeting at the seminary wrapped up, he blessed them.
It was one of many encounters the pope has had in his first visit to the US through which he sought to show his compassion for those who struggle, suffer and live at the peripheries of society, including prison inmates, poor immigrants and the homeless.
But for many victims of sexual abuse, who have lived through years of cover-ups and denials by the church, the pope’s meeting and apology was a hollow gesture. Even independent Vatican experts suggest that the sex abuse scandal –which has severely tarnished its reputation and cost $3bn in settlements in the US –is a “weak spot” for a pope otherwise seen as a moral voice for the world.
“The pope said [on Sunday] that “God weeps for the victims” but we believe that there would be many less victims to weep over if Pope Francis and other church officials would take action to protect the children,” says Barbara Blaine, who was sexually abused by a local priest in Ohio and founded an outspoken advocacy group called Snap (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests).
When Francis spoke before hundreds of US bishops this week, saying they had shown “courage” in handling the crisis and congratulated them on selling church assets to settle cases, Blaine says it felt like a “slap in the face to real victims”.
“It is baffling. Several victims assumed that the reports of this were either a joke or a mistake. This same pope who seems so compassionate to the prisoners, the poor, the refugees and the sick, seems incredibly hardened against victims and stalwart in continuing to leave children and vulnerable adults at risk,” she told the Guardian.
Given the sensitivity of the abuse and cover-up scandals, which often involved accused clergy being moved from diocese to diocese to avoid being found out –Francis’s comments could appear, at best, tone deaf, and, at worst, playing down a scandal that rocked the church to its core.
The pope has apologized for the actions of the church in the past and has taken steps to try to address the issue. In 2014 he condemned the church’s handling of abuse, saying that the failure to respond to reports of abuse by paedophile priests –there was a systematic cover-up of abuse in which some priests were moved to other diocese following accusations of wrongdoing – had caused “even greater suffering” to victims. He created a committee – which included two adult victims of abuse – to address the issue and set up a new but untested tribunal to investigate bishops who are accused of covering up sex crimes.
A former Vatican ambassador, Józef Wesołowski, died before he was due to go on trial for paedophilia at the Vatican. Wesolowski had been given access to a computer and allegedly watched child pornography even after he was recalled to Rome.
But Blaine and others are largely dismissive of the steps the Vatican has taken under Francis.
Some point to the case of Bishop Juan Barros in Chile, who has been accused of ignoring reports of abuse by a now notorious pedophile priest who was found guilty of molestation in Chile. Barros has denied the allegations and the Vatican has said he has the church’s support.
To truly end the “devastation” endured by so many – one group estimates that there are about 17,000 victims in the US – Blaine says there are concrete steps Francis could take now: fire all the credibly accused perpetrators and punish the bishops who have covered up crimes; open records to the public that are held in the Vatican regarding sex crimes and turn them over to police and urge local parishes to do the same; and reward whistleblowers who have been fired from jobs in the church.
Andrew Chesnut, a Catholic studies professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, says he does not believe that the pope’s weakness on the issue reflects a lack of understanding of the scale of the problem, especially since it is potentially an even bigger issue in Latin America, where a recent year-long investigation by the news organization GlobalPost concluded that the church was allowing allegedly abusive priests to continue working in remote and poor communities in South America.
“He promised to implement a zero tolerance policy, but the church continues to spend millions of dollars litigating cases and refuses to divulge records of priests who have been accused,” says Chesnut.
Nor is the criticism of Francis new. According to papal biographer and journalist Jimmy Burns, Francis was not as outspoken or proactive in dealing with sex abuse as campaigners wanted him to be even when he was an archbishop in Argentina.
But Burns argues that Francis has accomplished some change: having moved by decree to break the cover-up mentality, he says that accused bishops and priests will find it more difficult to escape justice.
He adds that, despite the controversial comments before the US bishops – which Burns says were meant to boost their morale – Francis has made an effort to offer his support to victims.
“He has reassured them that the days when they felt the institutional church considered them adversaries and enemies are over,” Burns says. Furthermore, he says it is unfair to blame Francis for not devoting his trip to the issue, given that there were other pressing matter that the pope needed to address on this visit, from the environment to diplomatic issues, poverty and the refugee crisis.
But there is another issue that some activists find deeply insulting: the insinuation that the sex abuse crisis is essentially over, and that the church has cleaned house.
“It is misleading to portray the crisis as though it were “history.” We know it is on-going,” says Blaine, pointing to an investigation by UN human rights experts.
According to a 2014 report by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the committee was “gravely concerned” that the Holy See had not acknowledged the full extent of the crimes committed, nor taken necessary measures to address cases of child abuse. Among its primary concerns, the committee found that “dozens of child sexual offenders are reported to be still in contact with children”.
Andrew Chesnut, the expert at VCU, agrees that the meeting alone will change little, unless Francis follows up with some changes in Vatican policies.
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