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VATICAN CITY – As the benches empty and the scandal threatens over the church, the Vatican on Wednesday opened a three-week assembly to discuss how to bring young people into the fold.
At the start of the rally, Pope Francis said, "This moment has brought to light a church that needs to listen."
The pope said he wanted to hear the doubts and criticisms of the young people. But the scene that was held not far from the place where the synod of bishops was held, as it is called the assembly, suggests that the Roman Catholic Church has some bread on the board.
While the synod participants were singing and praying, about 20 survivors of sexual assaults by religious people were protesting just off the road to St. Peter's Basilica. They had come from Italy and other parts of Europe to denounce what they considered the Vatican's indifference to their demand for prosecution of abusive priests – and those who hid them -.
In a first, about three dozen Catholics under the age of 30 will participate in the Vatican assembly, along with nearly 270 clergy. They will discuss a variety of topics, including sexuality, pornography and video games, as well as a "disposable culture" that undermines human dignity.
One of the protesters hailed the decision to include the youth, saying that she was "very positive". But the protester, Matthias Katsch, survivor of religious abuse, a member of the recently formed group Ending Clergy Abuse, said the pope had to go further.
"They should focus discussions where it hurts the most. It is an outrageous abuse of power and thousands and thousands of children and young people injured by church leaders in recent decades around the world, "he said. "You can not discuss youth without talking about that."
Around him, other survivors waved placards with their demands: "Never cover again"; "Make zero tolerance a reality"; "Create a commission of investigation and international justice". The signs were in Italian and English, said one of the organizers, so the message I would be heard beyond the borders of Italy.
Pope Francis, for one, did not have it, they said.
Despite repeated assurances that the Vatican will apply zero tolerance to religious abuse, the Pope's record is "disastrous," said Francesco Zanardi, representative of the main group of Italian religious survivors, Rete L'Abuso.
"Zero tolerance is a message for the media," he said, but in Italy "it has not been applied".
While the church was beset by scandals of sexual abuse in the papacy of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, new revelations of abuse and its concealment in Australia, Ireland, the United States, and Germany undermined Francis' credibility.
A poll released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that 62% of Catholics in the United States believe that the pope is doing "just right" or "poor" work by tackling the problem.
Asked this week about the risks of degradation of the synod, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, Secretary General of the Assembly, said that he did not see "obstacle". The synod, he said, could show young people what the church really is.
"Frankly," he told reporters, "we think this is an opportunity for us to show who we are, so that the church is known not only through those who have failed or given the scandal ".
"It has always been said, he added, that the church is a sinner and a saint."
In the past, Francis blamed clericalism for letting sexual abuse happen. And in his opening speech at Wednesday's synod, he again stressed the "plague of clericalism".
"An elitist and exclusivist vision of the vocation that interprets the received ministry as a power to exercise rather than a free and generous service to give," he said, is "at the origin of many evils in the church ".
Earlier in the day, at a homily, Francis choked on his tears as he welcomed "for the first time" two bishops from Mainland China. Bishops Guo Jincai, of Gengde, and Yang Xiaoting, of Yanan, were present as a result of an interim agreement reached last month with China on the bishops' appointments. "We offer them our warm welcome," said Francis.
As the authority of the church uses less and less, the synod, which ends on October 28, faces a daunting challenge: to convince young people that it remains relevant.
"Often, we hear voices that reproach young people for being away from the church," Cardinal Sérgio da Rocha, one of the organizers, told reporters. "But many of them have had situations that lead them to claim that it is the church that has moved away from the young people and they say so openly. Therefore, we must ask ourselves if we are a meaningful community for young people today. "
The pope said that the church should learn to listen to everyone, "including young people who often do not feel understood by the church in their originality and are therefore not accepted for what it is. they are really, and sometimes even rejected.
The international media have noted, for example, the statement in the synodal working paper that some "LGBT youth" want to "experience more attention from them. church".
Even Mr. Katsch, the protester, said the synod could be "a great opportunity for the church". The young people present are the future, he said, "these are not responsible old men".
"They have to discuss how they want to build the church in the future," he said.
