I apologize for the length of this article, but given the seriousness of the issue, I believe the lengthy commentary is warranted.
Pope Francis has accused all of Chile's Bishops of destroying evidence of sex crimes, pressuring church lawyers to minimize accusations and of "grave negligence" in protecting children from pedophile priests.
In a devastating 10-page document delivered to Chilean Bishops during a summit this week, Francis said the entire Chilean Church hierarchy was collectively responsible for "grave defects" in handling abuse cases and the resulting loss of credibility that the Catholic Church has earned.
The document, reported by Chile's T13 television and confirmed as authentic on Friday by the Vatican, put mounting pressure on the Bishops as a whole to resign given Francis told them that "no one can exempt himself and place the problem on the shoulders of the others".
The Bishops held a news conference in Rome later on Friday.
Francis summoned the entire Bishops' Conference to Rome after admitting that he had made "grave errors in judgment" in the case of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by victims of Chile's most notorious predator Priest, the Reverend Fernando Karadima, of witnessing and ignoring their abuse.
But the scandal grew beyond the Barros case after Francis received a 2 300-page report written by two Vatican sex crimes experts sent to Chile to get a handle on the scope of the problem.
Their report hasn't been made public, but Pope Francis cited its core findings in the footnotes to the document he handed over to the bishops on Tuesday.
And those findings were damning.
Francis said the investigation showed there were "grave defects" in the way abuse cases were handled, with superficial investigations or no investigation at all of allegations that contained obvious evidence of crimes.
In other cases, there was "grave negligence" in protecting children from pedophiles by Bishops and Religious Superiors – a reference to the many cases of sexual abuse that have arisen in recent years within Chilean Religious Orders, including the Salesians, Franciscans and the Marist Brothers community.
Some of these Religious Order Priests and Brothers were expelled from their congregations because of immoral conduct, but had their cases "minimised of the absolute gravity of their criminal acts, attributing to them mere weakness or moral lapses", Pope Francis wrote.
But those same people "were then welcomed into other dioceses and given diocesan or parish jobs that gave them daily contact with minors", the Pope said.
Such behavior has been the hallmark of the clerical sex abuse crisis worldwide, with Bishops and Religious Superiors shuttling abusers around from parish to parish or dioceses rather than reporting them to police or launching canonical investigations and removing them from ministry.
He said such behaviour showed "an absolute lack of respect for the canonical process and worse, reprehensible practices that must be avoided in the future.
He said the problem wasn't limited to a group of people, but can be traced to the training Chilean Priests receive in seminary, blaming the "profound fracture" within the Church on the seminaries themselves.
The Vatican investigation, he said, contained "grave accusations against some bishops and superiors who sent to these educational institutions priests suspected of active homosexuality".
In the 1970s, the United States Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). It is a federal law designed to combat organized crime in the United States. It allows prosecution and civil penalties for racketeering activity performed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.
Until the passage of the RICO law, mob bosses were untouchable. But, with the introduction of RICO, the government could try them for crimes which they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing. This act ultimately closed a loophole in the system that allowed a person who instructed someone else, to be exempt from the trial because they did not actually commit the crime personally. Whole gangs could be prosecuted for the commission or cover up of crimes perpetrated by individuals within the gang.
The very definition of a criminal gang begs prosecution under RICO. A gang is a group of three or more persons who have a common identifying sign, symbol or name, and whose members individually or collectively engage in a pattern of criminal activity for the furtherance of the gang.
It appears that the Bishops of Chile were engaged in nothing less than a criminal enterprise and that the Episcopal Conference itself was aware of and encouraged a systematic cover up of the sexual abuse of minors by Priests and members of Religious Orders.
After the end of an extraordinary and historic meeting of the Pope with the entire Conference of Bishops, the Bishops themselves admitted that such was the case.
In a kind of “plea bargain”, all the Bishops of Chile have offered their resignation to Pope Francis who must now decide whether or not to accept or reject them.
But, it seems to me that resigning from office should be the least of the Bishops concerns.
Justice seems to require that these same Bishops be held accountable to the victims for their criminal behavior and be prosecuted for their crimes.
I don’t know if Chile has anything comparable to RICO law.
If it does, the government should begin a systematic prosecution of the Bishops of Chile for their part in conducting what amounts to a criminal enterprise no less loathsome than that conducted by any organized mob.
I have often wondered why RICO laws were not used to prosecute members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops who, for decades, were aware of the sexual abuse of minors by Priests and Clerics and often engaged in elaborate cover ups resulting from either pay offs to or the extortion of abuse victims.
The Bishops of Chile and Bishops elsewhere have brought shame and dishonor to the Church.
Pope Francis needs to realize that his response now will be the hallmark or the failure of his Pontificate.
The matter must weigh heavily upon his shoulders, to be sure.
May the Holy Spirit guide Pope Francis in the decisions he must make in the days and weeks ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment