Sunday night, as I stood in my back garden observing the lunar eclipse, I noted that the moon turned dark on the very day that the Pope celebrated a huge public mass in Protestant America. I am biblical enough to know that prophetic movements can be accompanied by celestial ‘signs’; I also know that the old Adventist teaching as to how the ‘deadly wound’ of the papacy will be ‘healed’ has lost favor with many of Adventism’s educated elite. Still, I would invite us all to read Revelation 13 once again, and note that for such a maligned interpretation of Scripture, this one is proving to be uncannily accurate.

We all know that the Pope spoke at length in the Senate Chamber to a highly receptive audience. Were I not an Adventist, the Pope’s address would probably have seemed both fortuitous and welcome. Yet, 50 years ago, such an event would have been unthinkable given America’s protestant identity and heritage. Things have changed in our country: the old antipathy between Catholics and Protestants has vanished. Most consider this to be a good thing; only Adventists do not see this change as hopeful in quite the same way as others do.

I could not believe my ears when I heard a journalist quip, “I’m an atheist, but I could actually follow this Pope!” Even more bizarre, I listened as a chorus of commentators intoned the Pope’s unimpeachable moral credibility. What I did not hear were any media voices willing to observe how this papacy has pretended to great moral authority in spite of the serial rape of children at the hands of its clergy over many years and around the world. To be sure, the Pope met with some of the abused victims; he expressed great sorrow for their pain, but I cannot understand how this culture of abuse can be described as now possessing such a vast weight of moral authority in the person of its head bishop! I should think quite the opposite would be the case.

The Pope’s formal statements appear to urge reform and real sorrow for victims, but just this week, the Pope congratulated hundreds of his American Bishops for their ‘courage’ in handling the child sex abuse scandal. For the victims of the abusive priests, this comment represents an outrageous level of duplicity, given that some of these same bishops did all that they could to cover-up the scandal and to shuttle priests from diocese to diocese in an effort to protect both the criminal priests from prosecution.

The Pope has dismissed three bishops guilty of gross negligence for allowing offender priests to continue abusing children, but they have not been stripped of their office as bishops. Meanwhile, a recently appointed Chilean Bishop, Juan Barros, has been accused of protecting a notorious paedophile priest (his mentor, as it turns out). Three actual victims have identified Bishop Juan Barros of having been present in the room as the abuse took place. Of course, the offending priest has escaped government prosecution due to the statute of limitations and is now living in solitude protected by the Church. Thirteen-hundred Chilean church members sent a letter to Pope Francis begging him to rescind the Barros’ appointment; 30 priests sent a similar letter, but the Vatican did nothing; instead, it reiterated its unqualified support for Barros. At Barros’ innaguration, protestors filled the Church, while most of the diocese’s priests boycotted the event. In this light, Pope Francis’ uplifting rhetoric rings false. How could a man of such supposedly high moral credibility read even a few of those 1,300 letters from his own members (and priests) and decide to retain Barros in such a high office?