Vatican Calls Abuses in Pennsylvania ‘Morally Reprehensible’

The Vatican responded Thursday to the horrors of a Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sex abuse, saying it felt shame and sorrow over the findings that more than 1,000 children had been abused by hundreds of priests over decades while bishops covered up their crimes.

“The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible,” the Vatican statement said of the report, which was released Tuesday, shocking Catholics with lurid tales of abusive priests and superiors who turned a blind eye. “Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith. The church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur.”

“Victims should know that the pope is on their side,” the statement said. “Those who have suffered are his priority, and the church wants to listen to them to root out this tragic horror that destroys the lives of the innocent.”

It was one of the strongest mea culpas to date on an issue Pope Francis has tried to address head-on in recent months, after mounting criticism that the pope had a blind spot when it came to dealing with the sexual abuse of minors by clerics.

Just this year, the pope admitted he had mishandled a crisis involving clergy accused of sex abuse in Chile, even as a Vatican tribunal convicted a Vatican diplomat based in Washington of possessing and distributing child pornography. At the same time, Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s de facto finance minister, is standing trial in Australia on charges of sexual assault.

In the United States, Francis accepted the resignation in July of one of the church’s most prominent clerics, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, after allegations emerged he had abused an altar boy in the 1970s and adult seminarians in the 1980s.

As part of what appeared to be a coordinated response intended to stem a spiraling crisis within the Roman Catholic Church in America, the head of the American bishops also released a statement Thursday that contained the first outlines of how the bishops plan to reform the church in reaction to the abuse revelations, as well as emotional pleas for forgiveness.

Mirroring the language of the Vatican, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, expressed shame and remorse, acknowledging that much of the blame lay on the shoulders of bishops and promising there would be change.

“I apologize and humbly ask your forgiveness for what my brother bishops and I have done and failed to do,” DiNardo wrote. “Whatever the details may turn out to be regarding Archbishop McCarrick or the many abuses in Pennsylvania (or anywhere else), we already know that one root cause is the failure of episcopal leadership. The result was that scores of beloved children of God were abandoned to face an abuse of power alone.”

To address what he called a “moral catastrophe,” DiNardo called for a Vatican-led investigation into the abuses of McCarrick and questions surrounding them. He also called for improved channels to report complaints against bishops, including new review bodies that would be able to operate with independence, and “substantial leadership by laity.”

American Catholics have been deeply shaken by the recent abuse revelations, which come after years in which the church insisted the problem of clergy sex abuse had largely been dealt with after reforms passed in 2002.

“I’m hopeful that they will follow through with everything, but we’ll see what happens,” said Ian McMeans, 32, a churchgoing father of four who lives outside of Pittsburgh.

The revelation that McCarrick, who was first removed from ministry June 20 after a substantiated complaint of abuse against an altar boy, was able to rise to the highest levels of the church in America despite repeated warnings he was routinely sleeping with seminarians generated deep anger among American Catholics. Then a man, known only as James, came forward to accuse McCarrick, a close family friend, of molesting him over two decades, beginning when he was 11. Compounding the sense of hypocrisy, McCarrick had been a prominent voice for adopting the 2002 reforms.

When the clergy sex scandal broke 16 years ago, some staunch Catholics defended the church, calling the outpouring of abuse stories anti-Catholic. This time, Catholics across the political spectrum in America are united in the belief that something must be done, prominent Catholics said.

Brian Burch, the president of Catholic Vote, a Catholic organization for supporting conservative social causes, said that conservatives “understood there was a problem, and we knew that it hadn’t been totally resolved since 2002.”

“But having now seen the evidence of how bad it really is, it is even worse than we thought. And this has caused an unbelievable amount of discouragement and despair on the part of the laity about what the future holds for the institution of the church.”

“In terms of having watched this over 15 years, I have never seen a reaction like I saw over the grand jury report, even among bishops,” said Rocco Palmo, a well-known Catholic commentator and blogger based in Philadelphia. “Just a sense of complete horror and disgust.”

Massimo Faggioli, a theology professor at Villanova University, said he saw in Thursday’s coordinated statements that the seriousness of the crisis appeared to be creating emergency alliances among the bishops, who have been divided over the past five years into pro- and anti-Francis factions, largely along liberal and conservative lines.

“This is worse than 2002, and they know that,” Faggioli said. “They know that the future of the U.S. church is not clear. Because if you look at the rage that there is out there, you don’t know what kind of trust there is left between the people and the leaders. And this is not something that can be played according to the usual rules.” Francis seemed to acknowledge the depth of the crisis in the Vatican statement, which was released by Greg Burke, the director of the Holy See Press Office.

“The Holy Father,” the Vatican said Thursday, “understands well how much these crimes can shake the faith and the spirit of believers and reiterates the call to make every effort to create a safe environment for minors and vulnerable adults in the church and in all of society.”

The last three popes have all met with survivors of sexual abuse on numerous occasions. Just this year, Francis invited several victims from Chile to the Vatican to ask for their forgiveness. Critics have rebuffed these overtures as big on gesture but short on substance.

In its statement, the Vatican noted that the grand jury mostly referred to cases dating back decades, a sign that headway had been made in the United States when it came to this blight. “By finding almost no cases after 2002, the grand jury’s conclusions are consistent with previous studies showing that Catholic Church reforms in the United States drastically reduced the incidence of clergy child abuse,” the statement said.

In its recommendations, the grand jury report called for lifting the criminal statute of limitations on sex abuse crimes and giving all victims an opportunity to sue the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred. Bishops in Pennsylvania have been actively lobbying against those reforms, a fact not lost on the official who investigated the church’s actions.

“I appreciate the validation of our work in Pennsylvania and the expression of remorse on behalf of Pope Francis,” said Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, reacting to the pope’s statement. “I hope that under the Holy Father’s leadership, the church will now embrace and support the grand jury’s recommendations.”