Without a clear and decisive focus on spiritual conversion and Gospel-inspired ways of responding to victims and exercising ministry, “everything we do risks being tainted by self-referentiality, self-preservation and defensiveness, and thus doomed from the start,” Pope Francis wrote to U.S. bishops.
“Let it be clear that before these abominations, the church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes,” the pope said Dec. 21.
Pope Francis named U.S. Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago to be part of the organizing committee preparing for a meeting of the world’s bishops’ conferences and representatives of religious orders to address the abuse and protection of minors.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Nov. 14 he had opened the bishops’ fall general assembly “expressing some disappointment,” but “I end it with hope.”
Bishop Donald Kettler has added the name of Bishop Harold Dimmerling to the list. Dimmerling was a priest of the Saint Cloud Diocese who later served as bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, from 1969 until his death in 1987.
The Boston Globe and the Philadelphia Inquirer newspapers teamed up for an article published in both daily papers Nov. 4 that examined ways it said the U.S. bishops have failed to police themselves even since their 2002 gathering in Dallas about clergy sex abuse when they “promised that the church’s days of concealment and inaction were over.”
A New York auxiliary bishop has been removed from public ministry pending a Vatican review of a decades-old accusation of sexual abuse against him, a claim he denies, the Archdiocese of New York said in a letter released Oct. 31.
How the Diocese of Buffalo handles cases of priests suspected of abuse was the subject of a report Oct. 28 by the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” which talked to a woman who leaked diocesan files on those priests to a local TV station.
