Advocates: Vatican response to sex abuse weak

updated 7:05 p.m. ET April 5, 2005

NEW YORK - Among the crowd cheering Pope John Paul II at Shea Stadium in 1979 was a 15-year-old New Jersey boy named Mark Serrano — there courtesy of a ticket provided by the priest he later accused of sexually molesting him.

Like other advocates for victims of abuse by priests, Serrano has mixed emotions as he assesses the papal transition now unfolding in the Roman Catholic Church. Though never losing affection for John Paul II, Serrano feels the Vatican under his leadership responded too weakly to the U.S. sex abuse scandal — and may not do any better under the next pope.

“Can we say the pope failed us? I think John Paul could have done more,” Serrano said. “Can we say the bureaucrats in Rome failed us? Absolutely.”

Serrano, who now lives in Leesburg, Va., is a regional official of SNAP — Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

SNAP’s national director, David Clohessy, and president, Barbara Blaine, said the pope’s rhetoric was admirable when he summoned America’s cardinals to the Vatican in 2002 and told them there was “no place in the priesthood” for those who harm children.

Blame put on U.S. bishops
“It’s been disappointing that the people who were close to the pope didn’t take his message to heart, and didn’t go further,” Blaine said. “We know full well that many bishops, even after that statement, left child molesters in the ministry.”

The pope’s comments, Clohessy said, “were good words that haven’t, unfortunately, been followed by real action. ... He was not well-served by his advisers.”

However, Clohessy added, the U.S. bishops deserve more blame that the Vatican.

“The bishops played legal hardball, were deceptive, transferred abusers and ignored victims,” Clohessy said. “They’re the front-line managers and have to bear responsibility.”

The abuse crisis erupted in Massachusetts in January 2002, then rippled into most dioceses in the United States; the church in Canada, Australia, Latin America and Europe — including the pope’s own Poland — also faced scandals.

Aside from the papal meeting with the U.S. cardinals, the Vatican tended to leave the scandal in the hands of American church leaders, although it did amend a proposed U.S. bishops’ discipline policy in 2002 to ensure that accused priests’ rights were respected.

“Since then the Holy See has not intervened,” said Helen Alvare, law professor at Catholic University in Washington D.C. “Might some future pope wish to speak more about the issue? It’s not impossible. There could be a shift of attention, a different way of speaking about things.”

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