The unprecedented Vatican summit focused on clerical sexual abuse concluded over the weekend, with Pope Francis insisting the Catholic Church must end its long history of covering up child sexual abuse. The pope called for an “all-out battle” but didn’t offer many specifics, prompting criticism from survivors. Judy Woodruff talks to Becky Ianni of the victim support group SNAP for her reaction.
What did Pope Francis’ summit on clerical sex abuse achieve?
Judy Woodruff:
Pope Francis ended an unprecedented Vatican summit focused on clergy sexual abuse by insisting the Catholic Church end its long history of covering up the abuse of children.
The pope called for an all-out battle, but he stopped short of offering specifics after four days of meetings.
Becky Ianni is a board member of the group — of the support group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. She is also a survivor of childhood clergy sexual abuse herself.
Becky Ianni, thank you very much for being here.
What was your main takeaway from these me...
Winter Appeal 2023
To our friends,
2023 has been a long year with many ups and downs for us all. As we close out the year, we at SNAP hope that you are feeling like you are on your way to being healthy, fulfilled, and happy. This past year has brought both successes and challenges. Thanks to the support you have shown in the past, we’ve been able to celebrate the good days and weather the stormy ones. Now, we are once again asking for your support as we work to support survivors new and old as we ‘Move SNAP Forward.’
At SNAP we are proud to have hosted a very well-attended conference in August 2023. This event allowed us to gather friends, survivors, advocates, and allies for a weekend of camaraderie and connection. We were so happy to be able to welcome many first-time attendees to gather in person and are already looking forward to the next conference.
To strengthen our movement for justice, healing, and prevention, SNAP will be expanding our peer support and providing more volunteer opportunities in the coming year. Through this great work, we are ensuring survivor voices are represented as we work for significant change that will benefit children and survivors.
Right now, survivors worldwide are getting the help they need from SNAP, and more and more reach out to us daily, but we need your help to keep those programs going and get our volunteers the training they need to thrive.
Your tax-deductible gift to SNAP can help offset the cost of our important mission. If you are not in a position to contribute, you can still support us by sharing this letter with those who can. As we continue to fight for survivors across the globe, your donation or sharing the great work SNAP does will help us continue our work to protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded, and prevent abuse.
Your donation ensures SNAP will be there for those who need us more than ever!
Warmly,
Michael W. McDonnell, C.P.S.
Interim Executive Director
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The Monitor | Abuse Case Is Opportunity for Pope | September 25, 2013
- An Argentine court finally sends to prison a priest convicted of child sex abuse in 2009 and defended by the Pope
- This is an opportunity for Pope Francis to be transparent and pastoral
- See our new summary, with translated articles and court documents, of then-Cardinal Bergoglio’s involvement in this controversial case
Dear Friend,
A pedophile priest in Argentina who has stayed free since his criminal conviction four years ago in part because of covert lobbying of judges by the Argentine bishops’ conference, headed by then-Cardinal Bergoglio, finally has started serving his 15-year sentence. This week, an Argentine criminal court ordered Father Julio César Grassi immediately to go to prison for molesting a 13-year-old boy in the late 1990s.
According to news reports, Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, led a private campaign to exonerate Grassi and discredit his victims after Grassi was convicted in June 2009. See our analysis of the Grassi case and dossier of articles and documents, which we made public this week.
Bergoglio and GrassiNow, as leader of the Catholic church, Pope Francis has an opportunity to order a full account of child sexual abuse by clerics in Argentina, and the cover-up by Argentine bishops. Six months into his papacy, the Pope has addressed financial corruption but not the corrupt shielding of sex offenders by bishops. He has expressed solidarity with nearly every vulnerable population except for those who were sexually abused within the church.
We are especially troubled that the Pope lobbied for Grassi so recently – in 2009 and 2010, years after the worldwide cover-up scandal broke and bishops in the US and Europe began implementing reforms, and soon after Bergoglio was nearly elected Pope in 2005.
Pope Francis in his America interview was contrite about his management failings as provincial of the Jesuits in Argentina during the dirty war, though he doesn’t mention his Jesuit subordinates, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were arrested, tortured, and released, let alone Mónica María Candelaria Mignone and her friends, who were arrested with the priests, tortured, and murdered. (See also a Google translation into English of the Mignone page.) The Grassi decision is the moment for Pope Francis to use the discernment also discussed in the interview to bring transparency to his time as a high archdiocesan official, archbishop, and cardinal in Buenos Aires. We urge that he order the release of a complete list of all credibly accused clerics with whom he dealt, both as an archdiocesan official and a Jesuit provincial, and that he compel Argentine bishops and religious superiors to publish similar lists, as 26 US bishops and religious superiors have done.
Pope Francis is no longer cardinal archbishop in a great and deeply Catholic country. He is Pope to all Catholics and inheritor of the revelations and changes obtained by sexual abuse victims from Los Angeles to Dublin and Brussels to Sidney. He is overdue to embrace this legacy and extend it. We assume Pope Francis eventually will meet with clergy sex abuse victims, as Benedict XVI often did. We urge him to set up his first meeting with the victims of Grassi and other victims of Argentine abusers. And we trust that he will exercise his unique power immediately to remove Grassi ex officio from the priesthood. The compassion so evident in Pope Francis’s first half-year as Pope must be extended to the church’s own wounded – in the terms of Francis’s battlefield hospital metaphor – the child victims of “friendly fire.” They are grievously wounded, some of them near death, and they need and deserve Pope Francis’s care.
Sincerely,
Anne and Terry
Anne Barrett Doyle, Co-Director, BishopAccountability.org
781-439-5208 US cell
[email protected]
Terence McKiernan, President, BishopAccountability.org
508-479-9304 US cell
[email protected]