20 August 2018
"If one member suffers, all
suffer together with it" (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul
forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by
many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience
perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes
that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the
victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of
believers and nonbelievers alike.
Looking back to the past, no effort
to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient.
Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able
to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility
of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their
families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our
commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.
1.
If one member suffers…
In recent days, a report was made
public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims
of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests
over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that
most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have
come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these
wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these
atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds
never go away.
The heart-wrenching pain of these
victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced.
But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it,
or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling
into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side
he stands. Mary's song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout
history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to our fathers: "he
has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from
their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good
things, and the rich he has sent away empty" (Lk 1:51-53).
We feel shame when we realize that
our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite. With
shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not
where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing
the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no
care for the little ones; we abandoned them.
I make my own the words of the then
Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday
2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed:
"How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the
priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much
self-complacency! Christ's betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception
of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the
Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our
hearts: Kyrie eleison - Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)" (Ninth Station).
2.
…all suffer together with it
The extent and the gravity of all
that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive
and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of
conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not
enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our
brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the
past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the
deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and
future history.
And this in an environment where
conflicts, tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can
encounter an outstretched hand to protect them and rescue them from their pain
(cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn
whatever endangers the integrity of any person. A solidarity that summons us to
fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is
"a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then
appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of
self-centeredness, for 'even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light' (2
Cor 11:14)" (Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul's exhortation to
suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to
repeat the words of Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen 4:9).
I am conscious of the effort and work
being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary
means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of
vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making
all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed
in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am
confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the
present and future.
Together with those efforts, every
one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change
that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal
conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint John Paul II
liked to say: "If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of
Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he
wished to be identified" (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To see things as
the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion
of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help.
I invite the entire holy faithful
People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the
Lord's command.[1] This can awaken our conscience and arouse our solidarity and
commitment to a culture of care that says "never again" to every form
of abuse.
It is impossible to think of a
conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active
participation of all the members of God's People. Indeed, whenever we have
tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small
elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches,
spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces,
without bodies and ultimately, without lives.[2]
This is clearly seen in a peculiar
way of understanding the Church's authority, one common in many communities
where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is
the case with clericalism, an approach that "not only nullifies the
character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the
baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our
people".[3] Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay
persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to
perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say
"no" to abuse is to say an emphatic "no" to all forms of
clericalism.
It is always helpful to remember that
"in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely
ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no-one is saved alone, as
an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account
the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human
community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people"
(Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). Consequently, the only way that we have to respond
to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task
regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a
people and a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and
mistakes with a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from
within.
Without the active participation of
all the Church's members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse
in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics
for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer
will help us as God's People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers
and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and
conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can generate
resources attuned to the Gospel. For "whenever we make the effort to
return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new
avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of
expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today's
world" (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).
It is essential that we, as a Church,
be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities
perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the
mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg
forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps
us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and
allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of
renewed conversion.
Likewise, penance and prayer will
help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people's sufferings and to
overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of
those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by
children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and
thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the
judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads
us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will,
and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power,
sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.
In this way, we can show clearly our
calling to be "a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the
unity of the entire human race" (Lumen Gentium, 1).
"If one member suffers, all
suffer together with it", said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and
penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this
exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice,
prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son's cross.
She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus' side. In this way, she
reveals the way she lived her entire life.
When we experience the desolation
caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, "to insist
more upon prayer", seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to
the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first
of the disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the
sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to
discover the model of a true follower of Christ.
May the Holy Spirit grant us the
grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these
crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.
Vatican
City, 20 August 2018
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