The abuse scandal opens a cold war between the pope and one of his trusted men

VATICAN CITY – In 2017, concerned that the Vatican has not kept its promise of "zero tolerance" with abusive priests, Boston Cardinal Sean O Malley, chief advisor to the Pope

Francisco

For the prevention of badual abuse of minors, he convened a meeting with the main collaborators of the pope.

An appeal committee set up by the pope had reduced the sentence to several Catholic priests convicted of child abuse. In some cases, the committee revoked their expulsion from the priesthood and applied a brief suspension.

"If this is known, it will trigger a scandal," said O Malley to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and other Vatican officials, according to a person present at the Vatican. the meeting. But no action has been taken on this subject.

The treatment of the Catholic Church
The prolonged crisis of religious badual abuse has left cracks in its hierarchy. Activists and some ecclesiastical leaders hoped that under the command of Pope Francis the Vatican would take a stronger stand against badual abuse, and believed that
the world summit of bishops to be held this week would advance this goal.

But the opposite has occurred, deepening the crack between the Vatican and the leaders of the American Church, who demand a more energetic response. And the best example of this crack is the deterioration of the relationship between Pope Francis and Cardinal O. Malley, a bearded Capuchin monk who likes to be called "Cardinal Sean".

After his election in 2013, Francisco designated O 'Malley as the Vatican's reference man in matters of badual abuse. North America, which usually walks in sandals and wears the simple habit of the Capuchin's brown bag, is the best example of the humility that Pope Francis encouraged to the Catholic hierarchy. The cardinal had earned his reputation for the rigor with which he had handled the crisis of badual abuse in the dioceses of Boston and other cities in the United States. The pope shared O 'Malley's speech on abuses and promised "zero tolerance".

However, according to one person who attended the meetings between the two, the exchanges between the pope and the cardinal stopped being spontaneous and affable and became visibly tense and formal.

The influence of the Boston Cardinal has so diminished that in November, the Pope left him outside the organizing committee of the Bishops' Summit this week, which had been the idea of. O & # 39; Malley.

In 2010, Cardinal Bergoglio had announced to his knowledge that Mr. O "Malley" should be nominated for the Nobel Prize of common sense ".

That year, O Malley was in Buenos Aires. In a room adorned with portraits of cardinals of the past and a short walk from Spartan apartments of Cardinal Bergoglio, Americans and Argentines reflected on the Church in Latin America and the political situation in the region, according to a witness at the time. the meeting.

According to the biographer of Pope Francis Austen Ivereigh, after the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, O Malley was one of the first American religious to support the election of Cardinal Bergoglio to the conclave .

In turn, the new pope has chosen the Bostonian as the representative of North America
the Council of Cardinals, a new body composed initially of eight members, to advise the pope on the Vatican government and the Church in general.

O 'Malley used his role in the new pontificate to bring the Vatican to investigate for violations and proposed to the pope the establishment of a self-directed Advisory Committee on Child Protection which would have the task of proposing changes to the policies and procedures of the Church.

In 2015, the panel recommended the creation of a special tribunal to try bishops who have ignored or concealed abuse. At a meeting of the Council of Cardinals, O Malley got the support of the pope. The following year, Francisco changed his mind.

The panel suggested that church investigations of abuse charges involve not only priests, but also non-church members, and that the Vatican archives on these investigations shared with victims and civil authorities. None of this materialized: the panel changed its task center, then proposed the organization of academic conferences on the subject and the pope replaced some of its members. In August 2018, at a meeting with victims of abuse in Dublin, Francisco justified these replacements by saying that "mistakes had been made during these appointments" and that the commission had not been honest with him.

Cardinal O 'Malley avoided criticizing the pope. Even privately with people he trusted, he blamed the Vatican's bureaucratic inertia and was confident that Francisco would do the right thing.

The opinion prevailing at the Vatican was that the Americans were too ambitious. When O & # 39; Malley called for a worldwide adoption of the US practice of publishing the names of the priests charged, other Vatican officials have privately condemned this practice as being defamatory.

Already in January 2018, during his trip to Chile,
Francisco had defended a local bishop accused of concealing abuses, claiming that, without evidence, the victims' insistent accusations were "slanders".

At the end of January, Francisco downplayed the Vatican's expectations regarding the summit on abuses committed in the Vatican, and told reporters that it would be fundamentally educational.

"We have to reduce expectations," he said.

(Translation of Jaime Arrambide)

The Wall Street Journal