Women take Catholic bishops to task at abuse summit

Associated Press

VATICAN CITY

A prominent Nigerian nun blasted the culture of silence that has long kept clergy sexual abuse hidden in the Catholic Church, telling Catholic leaders Saturday that they must transparently admit their mistakes to restore trust among the faithful.

A Mexican journalist followed up, telling the bishops and others at Pope Francis’ abuse summit that their collective failure to report abuse and inform their flocks about predator priests made them complicit in the crimes.

In between those admonitions, a German cardinal admitted that church files about abusers had been destroyed, victims were silenced, and church procedures were ignored – all in an attempt to keep the scandal under wraps.

Sister Veronica Openibo, Mexican correspondent Valentina Alazraki and German Cardinal Reinhard Marx delivered powerful speeches to nearly 190 church leaders on the third day of Pope Francis’ four-day tutorial on preventing abuse and protecting children.

The first two days focused on the responsibility of church leaders in tending to their flocks, and how they must be held accountable when they fail to properly protect young people from predator priests. Saturday was dedicated to issues of transparency and breaking the code of silence.

And it was dominated by women.

Openibo was one of only a handful of women invited to the meeting, and she used her time at the podium to shame the church leadership for their silence in the face of such crimes.

“How could the clerical church have kept silent, covering these atrocities?” she asked. “We must acknowledge that our mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency have brought us to this disgraceful and scandalous place we find ourselves as a church.”

Alazraki, the longtime Vatican correspondent for Mexico’s Televisa, challenged the leaders to decide whether they are on the side of the priests accused of abuse and those who cover up the crimes, or the victims.

“We have decided which side to be on,” she said, warning that unless they side with victims “journalists, who seek the common good, will be your worst enemies.”

Marx called for a redefinition of the Vatican’s legal code of secrecy and for the publication of statistics about cleric sex abuse. He said such transparency would be a first step toward restoring trust with the faithful.

Francis demanded that the conference be held to impress on church leaders that sex abuse isn’t just a problem confined to a few countries, but the whole church. He did so after he botched a case of cover-up in Chile and after the scandal exploded in the U.S., sparking a crisis of confidence in the Catholic hierarchy.

Survivors who have gathered in Rome to protest marched toward the Vatican shouting “Zero tolerance!”