News reports show impotence of papal sex-abuse commission

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 28, 2017

Talk about burying the lede! Credit the indispensable Terry Mattingly with noticing that in yesterday’s story about the Pope’s willingness to ease penalties on pedophile priests, AP put the most remarkable information in the last paragraph. So the biggest news was trimmed out of the story by most of the media outlets that carried it (including, sad to say, the story to which CWN linked in our News Brief).

That stunning paragraph focuses on the Pope’s special commission on sexual abuse, the initiatives that it has taken, and the net results:

Francis scrapped the commission’s proposed tribunal for bishops who botch abuse cases following legal objections from the congregation. The commission’s other major initiative — a guideline template to help dioceses develop policies to fight abuse and safeguard children — is gathering dust. The Vatican never sent the template to bishops’ conferences, as the commission had sought, or even linked it to its main abuse-resource website.

We already knew that the papal commission was languishing, because of a lack of funding, shortage of staff, and failure to hold regular meetings. But this news—inexplicably buried in the AP report—is far more damaging. The commission has launched two important projects, and neither has been implemented.

Negligent bishops still aren’t held accountable. That’s appalling. But any recommendation for disciplining bishops was bound to face stiff opposition. However, when you learn that the papal commission hasn’t managed to get its own recommendations posted on its own web site, you have a full, accurate, and extremely disturbing picture of this commission’s clout—and thus of the commitment to fight sexual abuse during this pontificate.