SHAME ON YOU, CARDINAL O'MALLEY

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, a top adviser to Pope Francis, has stated that the Holy Father’s remarks targeting Chilean sexual abuse claims “abandon” survivors of the church’s sex abuse crisis to “discredited exile.”

In a strongly worded statement rebuking Pope Francis’ remarks, the Boston Archbishop said the remarks were clearly “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse by clergy or any other perpetrator.”

“Words that convey the message ‘if you cannot prove your claims then you will not be believed’ abandon those who have suffered reprehensible criminal violations of their human dignity and relegate survivors to discredited exile,” O’Malley said in a statement.

Francis was leaving Chile Thursday when he accused victims of the country’s most notorious pedophile priest of having slandered another Bishop, Juan Barros, by claiming Barros covered up the abuse from the Rev. Fernando Karadima.

“The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,” Francis told Chilean journalists in the northern city of Iquique. “There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”

In my preceding post, I commented on the Pope’s remarks stating that I fundamentally agreed with the Holy Father.

Every human being is entitled to a presumption of innocence to any accusation of any crime no matter how heinous.  To do otherwise is both a violation of the moral and civil order.

It seems as though Cardinal O’Malley, caught up in the hysteria over the abuse of minors by Priests, has forgotten this fundamental rule of law and ordinance of charity.

Every person is likewise entitled to his or her good name and reputation.  To have that right denied by a mere accusation of wrongdoing without a presentation of evidence does great violence to justice and charity as well.

Cardinal O’Malley needs to be very careful about what he has said lest he himself be accused of complicity in the abuse scandal and be judged guilty without any proof of such an accusation being put forth.

Certainly, the abuse of minors by some Clerics is scandalous, but so too is the disrespect which some Prelates have shown to the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, who has attempted to address the pitiable situation with compassion and justice toward the accuser and the accused.

Shame on Cardinal O”Malley for his very public rebuke of Pope Francis, an unwarranted act aimed at pandering to the strident voices of those whose agendas may not necessarily be acting in the best interests of the victims or the Church itself.