Pope seeks to encourage abuse prevention board amid turmoil

Pope Francis encouraged his child protection advisory group Friday after weeks of upheaval caused by the recent retirement of a founding member and new worries about its agenda.

Francis asked his Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors to develop a “spirituality of reparation” with abuse survivors and a culture of safeguarding to prevent priests from raping and molesting children.

He lauded the commission’s work to build church child protection initiatives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where funding is lower than in the U.S. and Europe.

“It is not right that the most prosperous areas of the world should have well-trained and well-funded safeguarding programs, where victims and their families are respected, while in other parts of the world they suffer in silence, perhaps rejected or stigmatized when they try to come forward to tell of their abuse,” Francis said.

Francis established the group in 2013 to provide church abuse prevention best practices. In the decade following, several commission members have resigned, upset by the Vatican bureaucracy’s resistance to its suggestions and the panel’s ambiguous purpose and approach.
The Rev. Hans Zollner, a German Jesuit who heads the Pontifical Gregorian University’s child protection institute, left last. Zollner cited a number of commission issues in his resignation letter on March 29.

He alluded to a lack of financial accountability, transparency in decision-making, and clarity about members’ roles and appointment. Zollner’s critiques raised larger questions about the commission’s role in a Vatican bureaucracy reluctant to change and defensive of the abuse dossier.

To legitimize the panel, Francis brought it under the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Even that caused issues. Critics say placing the commission under the Dicastery, where all abuse cases are adjudicated, was like putting a victim’s advocacy group in a federal court.

The panel, headed by Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, recently moved into a downtown Rome villa to receive victims.

On Friday, O’Malley informed Francis that the commission had established a 3 million-euro fund to protect developing nations churches.

The Italian Bishops’ Conference, which has been lambasted for failing to punish predator priests and bishops who defend them, provided 2.5 million euros of that financing.

Francis said the sex abuse scandal has hampered the church’s mission of preaching the Gospel.

“A culture of safeguarding will only take root if the church’s leaders are pastorally converted,” he stated.