In the exercise of your pastoral ministry, you have had to respond in recent years to many heart-rending cases of sexual abuse of minors. These are all the more tragic when the abuser is a cleric. The wounds caused by such acts run deep, and it is an urgent task to rebuild confidence and trust where these have been damaged. In your continuing efforts to deal effectively with this problem, it is important to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected and, above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes. In this way, the Church in Ireland will grow stronger and be ever more capable of giving witness to the redemptive power of the Cross of Christ. I pray that by the grace of the Holy Spirit, this time of purification will enable all God’s people in Ireland to “maintain and perfect in their lives that holiness which they have received from God” (Lumen Gentium, 40).
The fine work and selfless dedication of the great majority of priests and religious in Ireland should not be obscured by the transgressions of some of their brethren. I am certain that the people understand this, and continue to regard their clergy with affection and esteem. Encourage your priests always to seek spiritual renewal and to discover afresh the joy of ministering to their flocks within the great family of the Church.
from Sandro Magister at chiesa.espressonline
http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=98383&eng=y
Abuse of Minors by Priests: An Assessment of the “Purification” Underway.
They are “heart-rending” crimes, an increasingly severe and demanding Benedict XVI said to the bishops of Ireland. A summary of two years of repression: what has been done, and what is left to do.
ROMA, November 20, 2006 – To the Irish bishops gathered before him at the Vatican at the end of October, Benedict XVI clearly said that this is a “time of purification.” It is a time of purification from the “filth” he denounced in the memorable Via Crucis at the Colosseum on Good Friday two years ago, shortly before being elected pope, a filth made up of the “many heart-rending cases of sexual abuse of minors. These are all the more tragic when the abuser is a cleric (1).” Pope Joseph Ratzinger is very severe and demanding in this area, more so than his predecessor John Paul II. In the year and a half of his pontificate, he has not hesitated to use the lash even against churchmen held to be untouchable by the previous pope. Along with the United States, Ireland is the country where the Church has created the greatest scandal. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, 68, confirmed in an interview with “Avvenire” (2) that Benedict XVI, in receiving the Irish bishops (see photo), not only denounced the horror of abuse, but dictated to them “precise indications” on how to clean up – with sanctions that are sometimes more rigid than the ones handed down by civil tribunals. In Ireland, the bishops have verified that in sixty years, from 1945 to 2004, 105 priests – almost 4 percent of the total – have been implicated in sexual abuse against minors under 18 years old, with around 400 victims. Of those still alive, 8 have been condemned to prison after a penal trial, and another 32 are undergoing civil trials. Still others have received no judicial sentence because of the impossibility of proving acts too far removed in time.
But with these, too, the hierarchy of the Church reacts today by excluding them from pastoral activity. And in any case it asks all the priests targeted by accusations to suspend all of their duties, even before investigations begin. It can therefore happen that these sanctions temporarily punish persons who later turn out to be innocent: “But unfortunately, experience has obliged us to apply these painful but indispensable provisions,” archbishop Martin affirms. The prevailing policy is that it is better to be too severe than to risk the contrary. It’s the same in the United States. There, too, it has been verified that the priests who have committed sexual abuse against minors in the past half century are around 4 percent of the total: 4,392 out of 110,000 diocesan and religious priests (3). Three fourths of the crimes took place between 1960 and 1984, when the customary practice was simply to transfer the guilty party from one post to another, perhaps after psychotherapy sessions that in reality didn’t change anything. This irresponsible and indulgent practice, even with the phenomenon in decline, was protracted until very recent times, when in 2002 the scandal exploded in the media and everything was discovered. The bishops of the United States reacted to their own previous weaknesses with a new “zero
tolerance” policy. A great number of cases have flooded the civil courts, and exorbitant requests for compensation have fallen upon the dioceses. Even some bishops have been upended, not only for having covered up abuse, but for having
committed it themselves. One of these, Anthony O’Connell of Palm Beach, Florida, made a revealing admission in 2002. He said that in doing these things, he felt the influence of the spirit of the 1970’s, “when the Masters and Johnson report laid down the law, and a climate of sexual transgression reigned.” In some courts in the United States, it has come to the point of citing the Holy See as an accomplice in the crimes under review. The last request of this sort came last May from a tribunal in Oregon. But until now, they have all been blocked on account of the Holy See’s immunity as a sovereign state. On February 8, 2005, receiving Condoleezza Rice at the Vatican, then-secretary of state Angelo Sodano asked his counterpart from the United States to intervene in defense of the immunity of the Holy See, which had been called to court by a tribunal in Kentucky. The intervention came. In Italy, the numbers on sexual abuse committed by priests are less startling than in the United States and Ireland. But there is an increasing severity on the part of the Church hierarchy here, too. The general secretary of the episcopal conference, Giuseppe Betori, who in 2002 described the phenomenon as “so insignificant as not to merit specific attention,” today promotes the establishment in every diocese of a Meter center, the association founded by Fr. Fortunato Di Noto to combat pedophilia (4). Ratzinger as well, when he was prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, was less insistent than he is today. Offenses against the sixth commandment were the exclusive domain of his congregation, but in a number of cases, even very circumstantiated denunciations were never pursued. Still in November of 2002, when the scandal in the United States was at its acme, Ratzinger minimized the number of guilty priests: “less than 1 percent,” and he attributed the explosion of the scandal above all to “the desire to discredit the Church.” But then he changed course. It was the autumn of 2004, and Ratzinger ordered the promoter of justice at the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Charles J. Scicluna of Malta, to retrieve from the files all the cases concerning the sixth commandment. The order was: “Every case must take its normal course.” In other words: no one could be held as untouchable anymore, not even those protected by the then extremely powerful cardinal Sodano, and not even the favorites of the reigning pope, John Paul II. And so among the other investigations were begun, or restarted, the investigations against the two founders of religious orders with strong support in the curia: Gino Burresi, Italian, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Marcial Maciel Degollado of Mexico, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, both accused of sexual abuse against their young seminarians and followers, and of extremely serious violations of the sacrament of confession. The death John Paul II, and the following election of Ratzinger as pope, did not bring to a halt the investigations ordained by the latter. On the contrary. In May of 2005, the first act signed by the new prefect of the congregation of the faith, William J. Levada of the United States, was precisely the condemnation of Gino Burresi, the first of the two founders of religious orders cited above. The condemnation had the approval of Benedict XVI “in specific form,” which does not admit appeal (5). The sentence on the founder of the Legionaries of Christ required more time, and had to overcome more resistance. When “L’espresso,” on May 20, 2005, gave a detailed report of the interrogations of dozens of accusing testimonies, the Vatican secretariat of state responded by asserting that “there is no canonical proceeding underway in regard to Fr. Maciel, nor is one foreseen for the future (6).” What was really at the heart of the apparent denial was that the congregation for the doctrine of the faith was sparing Maciel from a canonical process for reasons of health and age – he was 86. But the condemnation came relentlessly one year later: the revocation of all public ministry, and “a retired life of prayer and penance (7).” Shortly thereafter, Benedict XVI dismissed the cardinal secretary of state, Sodano.
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