It was reported recently in the Irish Times that Pope Francis, “rises at 4am, never surfs the internet, has not watched television since 1990, reads one only newspaper – Italian daily la Repubblica – and the one thing he would really like to do is walk the streets.” Perhaps we can assume then that the Pope has missed recent news coverage regarding several high-ranking members of the Catholic Church and their involvement in sex abuse scandals.
It was reported recently in the Sydney Morning Herald that evidence was given during Royal Commission Hearings in Ballarat, Victoria that Cardinal George Pell moved disgraced pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale between parishes and tried to pay one of his victims to remain silent. Pell has also been accused of ignoring another victim’s claim that a now-convicted sex offender was abusing children at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat while Pell was auxiliary Bishop.
Pell has yet to respond to these and other charges because he currently serves as the Vatican’s “Secretariat for the Economy,” an appointment he received last year from Pope Francis.
The Pope might have also missed the news that disgraced Bishop Robert Finn, who in 2012 was found guilty of failing to report suspected child abuse and became the first American bishop to be convicted of shielding a pedophile priest. Bishop Pell remains active in the church and was recently scheduled to preside over the ordination of four new priests in Kansas City.
And lets not forget Cardinal Godfried Danneels. After being shown to have personally covered for a man who for years had sexually assaulted his own nephew, was allowed to retire honorably at the normal retirement age, from his position as the enormously powerful head of the archdiocese of Brussels, Belgium. Last year, Danneels was personally invited by Pope Francis to consult at the Synod of Bishops on the Family.
Each of these men are a testimony that the Vatican’s continuing priority is protecting the hierarchy of the church, not children. In spite of the public rhetoric by the Pope and pledges to end the scourge of sexual abuse within the church, little seems to have changed. The conduct of these three men is linked directly to the sexual abuse of young children. Bishop Finn is a convicted criminal, yet still remains a priest. Cardinal Pell and Cardinal Danneels still serve at the pleasure of the Pope. At minimum, they all should be tried in canonical court within the ecclesiastical system in the Catholic Church and removed as a priests. Their behavior was immoral and illegal, and if the Catholic Church is seriously committed to ending this plague of sexual abuse, they need to recognize that these men are criminals and should be treated as such.