Pope Francis hires experts and American cardinal to prepare summit on abuses

Vatican City • Pope Francis named the Vatican's highest investigator on sexual abuse and a close US ally to the organizing committee for the February summit on abuse prevention, which became a high credibility test after the country's new eruption scandal around the world this year.

Victims of abuse and women working in the Vatican will also contribute to the preparatory committee. Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who chairs the Pope's Sexual Abuse Advisory Board, was also absent from the training announced on Friday, although one of its members, Reverend Hans Zollner, is the reference person for the Pope. group.

In addition to Zollner, the committee includes the archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, for a decade the sex crimes prosecutor at the Vatican, Cardinal Blase Cupich, appointed by Francis, and Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, member of the group of senior advisers of Francis.

Francis summoned the leaders of the Bishops' Conferences of the World to the Vatican on February 21 and 24 after the abuse scandal erupted in his native South America and again in the United States.

The stakes of the meeting grew exponentially after the Vatican ordered the US bishops earlier this month not to vote on the proposed new measures to investigate sexual misconduct or concealment in the United States. their ranks.

The Vatican has still not explained why it had blocked the vote of an American code of conduct for bishops and a council headed by lay people to investigate these, although the proposals were transmitted to the Vatican at the last minute and contain legal problems. . Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the American Bishops' Conference, said the Holy See wanted to postpone any vote until later at the February World Summit.

However, it is unlikely that a group of equally diverse church people, some representing national churches who continue to deny or downplay the scandal, will propose for four days universal proposals that will bring up the standards of responsibility that the American bishops were. search.

Cupich said he was disappointed by the Vatican's decision, but at the meeting of American bishops he offered to debate measures and even proposed a revised proposal himself.

His registration with the Vatican organizing committee is important, as he does not chair a conference of bishops himself – as are Scicluna and Gracias – and would have no other reason to attend the February summit. The fact that Francis chose him rather than DiNardo may be understood by the evident tensions between DiNardo and the Vatican over the US's proposals for responsibility rejected and DiNardo's public appeal for the opening of a Vatican inquiry into the American scandal, which Rome refused.

Cupich, meanwhile, is much more of a defender of the besieged pope, whose popularity in the United States has plummeted for his uneven management of the crisis of abuse.

"Pope Francis calls for a radical reform of church life because he understands that this crisis concerns the abuse of power and a culture of protection and privilege, which has created a climate of secrecy without the perpetrators being held responsible, "said Cupich. wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "All this must end."

O'Malley, for his part, said he would attend the February meeting as chairman of the Pope's Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which had proposed the summit in the first place. In a statement, O'Malley said the meeting would help the church define a "clear path forward" toward transparency, including asking for the disclosure of the names of priests credibly accused in dioceses and religious orders.

Zollner, who heads a safeguarding studies institute at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, acknowledged that expectations were high before the meeting.

"And it is understandable that they are high, given the seriousness of the scandal that shocked and wounded so many people, believers and not, in so many countries," he told Vatican Media.

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said Francis' decision to host the meeting showed that he saw the protection of minors as a "fundamental priority for the church".