Pontiff talks of ‘remorse’ and ‘never again’ but the church’s culture is impervious to change, and there will be more horrors to come

Pope Francis must have hoped that last week’s unprecedented summit in Rome of senior bishops and church figures from around the world would mark a turning point for his papacy on sexual abuse. The world would see that the Vatican was finally getting a grip on the issue that has caused such grave damage to the church for the past 20 years.

Such hopes have been dealt a devastating blow by the news that Cardinal George Pell, until recently the third most senior figure at the Vatican, is facing a prison term for the sexual abuse of minors in the 1990s.

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The Australian’s conviction on criminal charges will have powerful reverberations throughout the global church. It propels the toxic issue of the “abominations” of children – Francis’s own word – directly into the heart of the papacy, where until December the disgraced cardinal had a seat as an influential member of C9, the inner circle of pontifical advisers.

It is likely to herald further haemorrhaging from the pews of Roman Catholic churches by disillusioned and despairing parishioners in the west. And it sends a potent message to the church’s elite that no one is too important or too powerful to escape justice; some will be quaking in fear under their cassocks as Pell is led away to prison.

Pell’s downfall comes just days after another high-profile figure was defrocked by the pope after a Vatican hearing found him guilty of sexually abusing minors. Theodore McCarrick, a former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, was removed from the priesthood after years of swirling rumours about his predatory behaviour with trainee priests. Francis was accused of failing to investigate or take action until a man went public last summer.

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In France, a verdict is expected next week in the trial of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, who is accused with five others of helping to cover up alleged sexual abuse. Last month, the Vatican announced that Gustavo Zanchetta, a former Argentinian bishop who was appointed to a senior position at the Holy See in 2017, was under preliminary investigation over alleged sexual abuse claims.

Last June, Francis accepted the resignation of three Chilean bishops over their handling of abuse cases, including one he had robustly defended a few months earlier. In July, Philip Wilson stepped down as archbishop of Adelaide after he was convicted of concealing child abuse, although he was subsequently acquitted on appeal. In August, a damning grand jury report laid bare the scale of sexual abuse and its cover-up in Pennsylvania.

After a disastrous papal visit to Ireland, a once staunchly Catholic country where the legacy of sexual abuse has decimated some congregations, an investigation in Germany found that more than 1,600 clergy were implicated in the abuse of 3,677 children over a 60-year period; it was “probably only the tip of the iceberg”. More than half the senior clerics in the Netherlands were accused of covering up sexual abuse, and thus allowing the perpetrators to commit more crimes, between 1945 and 2010.

In the UK, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse heard graphic testimony from former pupils at Catholic schools. In December, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior cleric in England and Wales, denied under cross-examination that he had covered up abuse; this month, it emerged that the pope’s representative in Britain had failed to respond the inquiry’s demands for information.

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Observers point out that the scandals uncovered so far focus on the sexual abuse of minors in western countries. There has been little detail heard thus far on the “sexual slavery” – again, the pope’s words – and abuse suffered by nuns and sisters in religious orders; and few accounts of abuse and exploitation by clerics in the global south, where the Catholic church has enjoyed exponential growth. That is all to come, they say.

It is hard to see how Pope Francis can avoid the blowback from such a global disaster, and particularly from Pell’s downfall, despite his repeated talk of shame, remorse, zero tolerance and “never again”. He has identified “clerical culture”, or excessive deference to the clergy, as a major problem. Changing a culture so dominant at all levels of the church is essential but extremely difficult. And, as ever, Francis will face powerful resistance from those with most to lose.





