Pope Leo XIV meets with head of abuse commission

 "We hope it means that the new pope intends to make fighting crimes of clergy sex abuse and cover-up a top priority.  He would be wise to seek guidance from an experienced hand like O'Malley, and he needs advice now. Pope Leo has started his tenure under a cloud of mistrust based on allegations that he mishandled abuse cases in Chicago and his former diocese of Chiclayo, Peru," Ms Doyle said in a statement.

 

 "Leo and O’Malley are both fluent Spanish speakers with deep experience of the sexual abuse problem in the Americas.  We hope they will confer often about abuse, and that O’Malley will be as blunt with Leo as he was with his predecessor in 2018, when he rebuked Pope Francis for discrediting victims in Chile."  

 

 "We call on the cardinal to urge Pope Leo to release information about his record on abuse. O’Malley should advise the pope to open the complete files of the abuse cases in Chicago and Chiclayo. If the documents reveal the new pope to have acted irresponsibly in the case of Father James Ray in Chicago or culpably negligent in handling allegations against two Chiclayo priests, Eleuterio Vásquez Gonzáles and Ricardo Yesquén, so be it. The pope could make amends by enacting reforms that would make children safer in the church; indeed, he must do this anyway. He could start by disclosing the names of clergy found guilty by the Vatican of child molestation. With O'Malley's encouragement, he must also quickly move to universalize the “one strike and you're out" norm that has been in effect for the U.S. church for more than two decades."

 

 "As prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, then-Cardinal Prevost worked within the system and didn’t make waves. He oversaw cases filed under Vos estis against bishops accused of sexual abuse of vulnerable adults and of cover-up. On his watch, no complicit bishop was stripped of his title, and no names or data were released. Now he has an opportunity to make that system more transparent, and finally to address bishop accountability, long the church’s blind spot." 

 

 "When Cardinal O’Malley and Pope Leo met, two very senior members of their religious orders, transparency of the religious institutes surely was on the agenda. Pope Leo could apply the principle of transparency to the Augustinians, the religious order that he led for two terms as Prior General.  He could direct the two other US provinces of the Augustinians to release lists of their accused clergy and he could have the Midwest Province, which he led briefly, improve its list." 

 

 "A week ago, in a prayer for the conclave, O'Malley's commission wrote, "Let no concern of scandal obscure the urgency of truth. Let no consideration for reputation impede our paramount responsibility to take action on behalf of those who have been abused."

 We are glad that one of Pope Leo's first meetings was with a cardinal who focuses on the church's massive unsolved problem of sex crimes by clergy. Going forward, we hope that O'Malley will persistently remind Pope Leo of the "urgency of truth" around abuse and of his "paramount responsibility" to the victims of the abusers he managed in Chicago and Chiclayo and to the millions of children who remain at risk in the worldwide church," Ms Doyle said.

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