Cardinal O'Malley: Pope caused 'great pain' for abuse survivors in Chile/Francis tells Peru's bishops to have 'episcopal spirit of prophecy

https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/cardinal-omalley-popes-defense-chilean-bishop-caused-great-pain-abuse-survivors
https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/francis-tells-perus-bishops-have-episcopal-spirit-prophecy
MGB:_The allegation against Barros is that he actually witnessed an act of abuse and said nothing. That is pretty fantastic, since usually abusive priests do a better job of hiding such abuse. There is a difference between chewing out an altar boy (which is not abuse) and chewing on one. One naturally believes that someone whose feelings got hurt is claiming something worse, because I doubt Barros is voyeur.

Without seeing the file, I cannot know and the Pope probably does. Part of dealing with this crisis is not honoring false claims. This Pope has done more than most to fire bishops who did not report when they should have. Has he done everything he could? No. He is known as being as protective of bishops as any other pope. He certainly has not done anything to modernize church leadership to move beyond the medievalism of the hierarchical episcopacy nor has he acknowledged that bishops are papal appointees, so that the patrimony of the Vatican museum should be at risk in settlements with abuse survivors. Of course, if this were true, the Church would fight that much harder to keep settlements small. We certainly don’t need more legal hardball, so making these assets available must be a gift rather than an imposition, even though the logic of doing so is patently obvious.

In Peru, it is all well and good for bishops to speak out against the powerful in the spirit of prophesy, but that spirit was originally given to the people to speak out against the shepherds when needed, like in Chile. The bishops themselves need to speak out against Rome for not backstopping sexual abuse payments, as the bishops are as much of Rome as they are of Peru. Indeed, they should speak out for a change in that arrangement so that the people elect them rather than the pontiff. That would be the Spirit in action. From that would come the courage to speak against governmental tyranny rather than to co-opt it to cover the truth.