Cleansing the Church
Meanwhile, the Catholic hierarchy has institutionalized safeguarding efforts, such as holding the First National Safeguarding Conference and conducting training seminars, like the Cebu archdiocesan orientation seminars on safeguarding. At these gatherings, Vatican officials like Archbishop Charles Scicluna have explicitly urged local bishops to cleanse the Church of the child sexual abusers hiding in their dioceses, which they are apparently reluctant to do.
The outspoken archbishop represents the views of Pope Leo XIV. He is the Vatican’s leading clerical sex crimes investigator. He has called on bishops in the Philippines to stop their hand-wringing and expressions of anguish, and instead end the coverup of sex crimes by clergymen. Archbishop Scicluna has called for a strict policy of holding abusive priests accountable to civil law. Many bishops protect pedophile priests from prosecution and accountability and just pray for their victims. Dr. Heasley, co-founder of The Human Dignity Initiative with lawyer Michael Gatchalian in Cebu, recently invited Archbishop Alberto Uy to a dialogue on clerical child abuse.
In his invitation, posted online, Dr. Heasley explained to Archbishop Uy that “the greatest threat to the Catholic Church in my experience as 10 years as an advocate is the sexual abuse of children by clerics and institutional lay members and religious members of the Catholic Church. It has been a monumental scandal all through the world and has and threatens the very existence and credibility of the Catholic Church internationally and here in the Philippines…
“In October of last year, the same month that the National Safeguarding Conference was held in Clark, a group of which I was a part of, ECA, or Ending Clergy Abuse Global, met with Pope Leo, and Pope Leo expressed very clearly his desire for zero tolerance in this horror of sexual abuse by clergy and attacks on children.
“I’m inspired to speak to you directly in a way that we hope will be positive and productive…. My greatest concern, particularly, is the most vulnerable of your flock, those that have been sexually molested by clerics or stakeholders in the Catholic Church. That is, children sexually abused by clerics inside the Catholic Church… the ripple effects of this abuse through the whole of society are so ghastly and so corrosive that the sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church threatens to completely destroy the moral authority of this Catholic Church and destroy the whole institution.
“The Catholic Church in Ireland has undergone massive change from a church that had total moral control to one that has zero in terms the public’s trust of this institution. All of that because of the sexual abuse of children. That’s what destroyed the Catholic Church in Ireland, and this is what threatens the continual survival of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. If it’s not addressed, it can’t be avoided. It has to be dealt with head-on. And it can only be done through the very things espoused at the national conference: openness, transparency, protection of survivors.
“Nothing could be more positive and life-affirming than the church biting the bullet and making sure that sexually abusive priests or any other functionary in the Catholic Church is made to pay for their sins, that are criminal attacks on children, crimes that cannot be accepted. I hope that we will engage as human beings in the near future and hope and look forward to meeting you to help us jointly deal with this horror.”/PN
