Pope Francis Tells U.S. Bishops to Close Ranks and Stop Recriminating over Sex Abuse
Pope Francis has urged the United States bishops to stop pointing fingers at one another over clerical sex abuse and, instead, unite in a common effort forward.
In a letter to the U.S. bishops gathered in retreat this week, the pope said that “times of trial and tribulation can threaten our fraternal communion” and insisted that the bishops regain lost credibility, which is “the fruit of a united body.”
As many bishops have called for investigations into the serial homosexual abuse of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, including who enabled his rise through the clerical ranks and who benefited from his patronage, the pope called on his brother bishops to “abandon a modus operandi of disparaging, discrediting, playing the victim or the scold in our relationships, and instead to make room for the gentle breeze that the gospel alone can offer.”
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“Let us try to break the vicious circle of recrimination, undercutting and discrediting,” Francis said in the letter released Thursday, “by avoiding gossip and slander in the pursuit of a path of prayerful and contrite acceptance of our limitations and sins, and the promotion of dialogue, discussion and discernment.”
For this to happen, he said, we must “stop projecting onto others our own confusion and discontent, which are obstacles to unity.”
“We have to be careful that the cure does not become worse than the disease,” he said.
In the letter, the pope acknowledged that “the Church in the United States has been shaken by various scandals that have gravely affected its credibility” and that its credibility has been seriously undercut “even more by the efforts made to deny or conceal them.”