While the airwaves have been flooded since Pope Francis’ death on Monday with praise for a transformative and humble leader, the pope’s legacy is a more complicated and troubled one for many focused on the issue of clergy sex abuse.
“My heart goes out to all of those who are deeply affected by [the passing of Pope Francis],” said Myra Russell, a Boston resident.
But for Russell, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse between the ages of 4 and 15 when she lived in Albany, it was hard to hear Pope Francis talking about “world peace” while knowing the inner lives of abuse survivors are anything but peaceful.
“As a survivor, first of all, I can tell you survivors are having a lot of feelings today, lots going on inside them,” said Peter Isely, one of the founders of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“This is the third pope in modern times since this issue has become public … thanks to survivors decades ago,” Isely said. “Each one of those popes, including Francis, covered up sex crimes before they became pope. I’m not speculating here. This is demonstrable and proven. Unfortunately, we only found out about that after they became pope.”
That’s why SNAP launched “Conclave Watch,” a database tracking the records of Catholic Cardinals in handling abuse cases, he said.
“We don’t need another pope that’s covered up sex crimes,” he said. “I don’t know how morally the church can survive really if we drag a fourth papacy into this.”
“Francis needed to complete the work that started in Boston. ... And he didn’t do that.”Peter Isely, one of the founders of SNAP
The crisis came to light nationally in 2002, thanks to abuse survivors in the Boston area who shared their stories with the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team.
“It was because the force of what came out in Boston that made the American bishops make a change in church law, which made it prohibited that any priest or cleric that has been known at any time to have sexually abused a child had to be permanently removed from ministry and could never function or practice or present himself as a priest again,” Isely said.
But as pope, Francis never enacted a global change in canon law that prohibits priests from serving in ministry when it’s been proven they are guilty of sexual abuse.
“Francis needed to complete the work that started in Boston. He needed to complete it and make it global, what began in Boston,” Isely said. “And he didn’t do that.”
Father Michael C. McCarthy, SJ, dean of the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry, agreed that Francis should have done more.
“I think probably he himself would say his approach was insufficient,” McCarthy said. “I think it was probably a step forward from his predecessors. But I do think that this is something that the Church continues to wrestle with, as indeed larger society in so many other ways too.”
Pope Francis’ understanding of and response to the crisis evolved significantly over the years, said Stephen Pope, professor of theology at Boston College.
“The clergy sex abuse problem is sort of a tortured issue for Pope Francis in that he was appalled by the behavior of priests, but also by the bishops that covered up the abuse,” Pope said. “And he really wanted to insist on transparency and accountability. He had a great learning curve on this.”
For example, Francis initially refused to believe the accounts of abuse survivors in Chile and accused them of slander in 2018.
“But when there was huge outcry, he went back to Rome and sent a delegate to investigate the accusations of abuse and he discovered that they were indeed true. The result was he went through a process of repentance,” Pope said.
“There’s a tendency with the hierarchy to think these are a few rotten apples. And the pope came to believe that there was a systematic problem within the church and not just in Chile or the U.S. Or Germany, elsewhere, but throughout the world,” Pope said.
Francis founded the first Pontifical Council for the investigation of sex abuse in the church, which was headed by Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston.
“Some of the members were frustrated that their work got delayed and thwarted to some extent by the bureaucracy of the Vatican,” Pope said. “And were frustrated that the pope couldn’t take control of that Vatican bureaucracy more effectively. The general feeling is that he meant sincerely to change not just the institutional reporting mandate and insisting on accountability for anyone who’s accused of sex abuse, credibly accused, but also to change the culture of the church.”
Asked on Monday about Francis’ record on clergy sex abuse crisis, Archbishop Richard Henning of the Archdiocese of Boston spoke generally about the example the pope set.
“It’s hard to heal the damage that is done by that kind of transgression of human dignity,” Archbishop Henning said.
“So the Holy Father, I think, has a heart for people who are suffering, and he gives us his own witness, the way to respond, which is that we walk with people, we accompany people, right?” Henning said, still speaking of Pope Francis in the present tense.
“So he uses that word throughout his writings, ‘accompaniment.’ He calls us to, without judgment, just be with people, listen to them, try to understand their experience, allow them to express their heart and their suffering and their story,” Henning continued. “And I think … that’s a good witness he gives us and I certainly will try to live that in my own ministry here.”
Now, as Cardinals choose a new pope, abuse survivor Myra Russell said she’s feeling a sense of uncertainty.
“I’m going to try and be optimistic about the future,” she said. “But it’s scary when people I talk to say they don’t really even know that this [abuse] still happens.”
