Megan Gibson in New Statesman:
In 2019, over the course of a chilly February weekend, the Catholic Church seemed as though it was on the verge of a reckoning. For four days, Pope Francis convened a gathering of bishops in Vatican City for the Church’s first ever sexual abuse summit. Since becoming Pope in 2013, Francis has developed a reputation as a moderniser whose dedication to social justice could overcome the Church’s unwillingness to deal with a scandal that has lost it many followers in recent decades. The Pope said he wanted to address the generations-long delay in dealing with the sexual abuse of children by priests and other clergymen over decades across the world. In front of an audience of 180 bishops and cardinals, Pope Francis spoke of monstrous acts of evil and, ultimately, of justice. It was hailed as a defining moment in his leadership. At last, it seemed, the Catholic Church was ready to reform itself.
That reformation never took place. On 6 October this year, the Vatican’s first sexual abuse trial culminated in an acquittal for two clergymen: one, Gabriele Martinelli, a former altar boy who had served the Pope and has since become a priest; the other, Enrico Radice, a former rector accused of covering up instances of abuse at a seminary in the Vatican. The three-judge panel stated in its verdict that the alleged victim, a former peer of Martinelli, had contradicted himself while giving evidence. Roman prosecutors, however, are pursuing the Martinelli case in Italian courts.
The Vatican’s judgment came just 24 hours after the publication of a landmark report in France that found members of the Catholic clergy had sexually abused at least 200,000 minors in the country over the past 70 years, and that the Church hierarchy had repeatedly covered it up. Following the release of the damning report, a Vatican statement said Pope Francis “felt pain” and that “his thoughts went to all of the victims”.
It seems extraordinary that even under the fiercest public scrutiny and an ever-diminishing faith in the Church, the Vatican remains incapable of reconciling its actions with the purported desire to end the problem of sexual abuse. It’s not just that the Vatican fails to hold individual clergy members to account for alleged crimes, or that it fails to address shocking revelations of depravity on behalf of its members. What is most astonishing is that the Church continues to work against the tide of righting its past wrongs: in the US, the Church has even opposed bills aimed at expanding the statute of limitations for cases involving the sexual abuse of children.
More here.