American survivors of clergy sex abuse are issuing a clear warning as cardinals prepare to gather in Rome to elect the next pope: Don’t repeat the past.
The advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests is demanding that the upcoming conclave choose a pontiff who has not covered up abuse and who will commit, on his first day, to a binding zero-tolerance law.
“The conclave can’t be another smoke-filled room where survivors get ignored,” SNAP spokeswoman Sarah Pearson told the Daily Mail. “If they pick another pope who plays defense for abusers, the damage will be permanent.”
When he received the role of pontiff, Pope Francis inherited a church mired in scandal. In response, he repeatedly made clear his intent to instigate change.
Abuse victim groups say he didn’t do nearly enough.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability, another U.S. organization holding bishops to task for lack of sufficient action, told the Guardian that Francis had “supreme power” but “refused to make the necessary changes.”
Though he spoke often of mercy and reform, Francis’ papacy was repeatedly pulled into the shadow of abuse scandals.
Allegations against former Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick led to his historic defrocking. In Chile, civil authorities raided Catholic Church offices in a deepening investigation.
In Australia, an archbishop was convicted of concealing abuse. And in Pennsylvania, a grand jury exposed a harrowing, decades-long pattern of clerical abuse and institutional cover-up.
Since Francis’ death on Monday, the SNAP campaign has promoted its website, conclavewatch.org, where it publishes its complaints and urges survivors and whistleblowers to come forward.
The group’s focus is currently on Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who is serving as camerlengo, the Vatican official responsible for overseeing the transition between popes. He previously led the Diocese of Dallas and served six years as vicar general in D.C. under McCarrick, who died this month.
The Irish-born cardinal lived with McCarrick in the same Dupont Circle residence, though he insists he never saw or heard anything about the cardinal’s decades of purported sexual abuse.
“Never once did I even suspect,” Cardinal Farrell said in 2018. “Now, people can say: ’Well, you must be a right fool that you didn’t notice.’ … But I don’t think I am. And that’s why I feel angry.”
He told Catholic News Service, “I was shocked, overwhelmed; I never heard any of this before in the six years I was there with him. I worked in the chancery in Washington and never, no indication, none whatsoever. … Nobody ever talked to me about this.”
For many of Cardinal Farrell’s skeptics, that answer rings hollow.
“Unless he was living in a cave, he heard the stories,” Boniface Ramsey, a retired priest who for years warned church leaders about McCarrick, told the Mail. “Everyone knows, but no one does anything.”
Others question the harsh light in which these religious leaders are painted.
Matthew Wilson, director of the Center for Faith and Learning at Southern Methodist University, told the Daily Mail that Cardinal Farrell “presided over a zero-tolerance regime — so much so that some criticized him for being too zealous in his investigations of even vague allegations.”
Judge Clay Jenkins of Dallas County said he never had cause to question Cardinal Farrell’s handling of abuse allegations.
“I can’t think of a situation where I had enough knowledge of an allegation of abuse to think Farrell did the wrong thing,” he told the Mail.
Cardinal Farrell also opened churches to migrants and Ebola patients and pushed for underserved communities to access health care.
Still, Cardinal Ramsey said Cardinal Farrell had a duty to investigate the rumors or speak to the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington.
“He made a clever ecclesiastical judgment, shall I say? His judgment was implicitly: Let’s not rock the boat,” he said, adding that’s “the kind of guy [he] is.”
It’s the magisterium’s desire for stasis that leads to years of sorrow for victims, say advocates. One Boston lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian, who represents hundreds of abuse survivors, told the BBC that, despite Francis’ efforts over the past several years, “there really hasn’t been any substantive change within the Catholic Church.”
He added, “Pope Francis said the right things, he meant the right thing, but the bureaucracy just shut him down.”
And “trying” isn’t good enough for SNAP, the group says. As Ms. Pearson bluntly put it: “Too many popes have promised change. This time, we want receipts.”
SNAP has filed formal “Vos estis lux mundi” complaints — the Vatican’s internal accountability process — against seven U.S. cardinals, alleging they mishandled abuse cases or protected abusers.
Shaun Dougherty, SNAP’s president, told London’s Guardian that those bishops now gathering at the Vatican, “including the 137 cardinals who will choose the next pope — collectively possess knowledge of thousands of abusive priests still serving in parishes and schools.”
Among those with knowledge, they say, is Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. SNAP insists that Dolan “left known offenders in ministry, approved secret payouts to abusive priests, withheld evidence of child rape from police, and fraudulently transferred $57 million to a cemetery fund to avoid paying settlements to abuse victims.”
Last week, the group led a protest outside Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where survivors and advocates rallied with signs and statements demanding that cardinals linked to cover-ups be barred from voting in the conclave.
The Washington Times has reached out to the press offices of Cardinal Farrell and Cardinal Dolan for comment.
The church may choose to avoid seriously addressing these claims in the furor of Francis’ funeral and the swiftly approaching conclave, but even Cardinal Farrell’s supporters know concerns over his connection to McCarrick aren’t going away.
“I understand why people are asking,” Mr. Wilson, the Dallas professor, said of Farrell’s censure.
As camerlengo, Cardinal Farrell is set to play a ceremonial and administrative role in the conclave. He will oversee Francis’ funeral Saturday and the customary destruction of the papal ring before shepherding the cardinals into the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel for the vote.
“There’s a profound spiritual wound here,” Ms. Pearson said. “The church has a chance to begin healing it — or to deepen it, irreparably.”
