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We were ignored, say members of US abuse commission

Lay advisors say bishops resisted and spurned them
We were ignored, say members of US abuse commission

From left, Nicholas Cafardi, lawyer Robert Bennett and Judge Anne Burke at a news conference in February 2004 (picture: Newscom/EPA/Mike Theiler)

Published: April 15, 2014 02:11 AM GMT
Updated: April 14, 2014 04:22 PM GMT

Commissions set up by church officials to advise church officials on clergy sexual abuse have a checkered history. No one knows this better than Catholics who answered their bishops' call to serve but found themselves and their advice rejected or ignored.

The U.S. bishops named a 12-member blue-ribbon panel of lay advisers amid the firestorm of media coverage in 2002.

"A lot of American bishops would not want to see any of us of the original review board named to this [pontifical] commission," said Nicholas Cafardi, who served on the National Review Board from 2002 to 2004.

"The report we wrote in 2004 was pretty rough on the bishops," said Cafardi, a Duquesne University law professor, dean emeritus and canon lawyer. "If [the pope and the Vatican] want a credible board, they should have at least one American who has dealt with the realities. This is hardly something to claim credit for, but we had the largest crisis in terms of victims and perpetrators -- more than Ireland, Belgium and Australia -- because our country has the biggest church."

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, who also served on the original U.S. National Review Board, said the bishops resisted the board on many points, such as whether there would be audits of priest personnel files and who would do the audits. "I don't think they realized that this was a time bomb and the magnitude of what was left to come."

She also noted, "The bishops didn't honestly deal with each other."

Cafardi, Burke and several others were present in 2004 when Chicago Cardinal Francis George celebrated Mass for the review board, and then afterward told them, according to several review board members there, "You will be the downfall of the church." The archdiocese's spokesman later denied the cardinal said this.

In 2005, George would ignore the U.S. bishops' Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People by failing to remove an accused priest, Daniel McCormack, who was subsequently prosecuted and sent to prison. The archdiocese has settled lawsuits with at least five of about a dozen plaintiffs for more than $7 million.

In 2012, when Cafardi learned that the Vatican was planning a conference on clergy sex abuse, he tried to get invited. He wrote to the organizer, German Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner. Vice rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Zollner has been named to the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Cafardi sent Zollner a copy of his 2008 book, Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops' Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children, on the bishops' failure to abide by voluntary guidelines prior to the 2002 conference in Dallas, where they adopted the youth protection charter.

"I wrote to Fr. Zollner ... offering to cover my own expenses. I pointed out I was a graduate of Gregorian and had this experience. Zollner sent a nice letter but it was a typical Roman kiss-off, saying the schedule has been set," Cafardi said.

Bishops spurning the advice of their own oversight groups are sources of disillusionment for people like Cafardi and Burke.

Sharing their frustration is Lieve Halsberghe of Louvain, Belgium, a researcher for BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy organization for victims of clergy sex abuse. 2010 saw the churches in Belgium, Ireland, Austria, Germany and Italy engulfed in scandals as revelations about the extent of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests became public. In Belgium, this led to a civil investigation and even a police raid on national church offices...

...Most notoriously, Roger Vangheluwe resigned as bishop of Bruges in 2010 after admitting to abusing a nephew over a 15-year period, beginning when the boy was 5.

Lieve Halsberghe, a member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in Belgium, said that Cardinal Godfried Danneels, retired archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, and his successor, Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, allowed Vangheluwe to retire quietly and did not seek justice. They are still respected public figures, often in the media, "as if nothing ever happened," Halsberghe said.

All these men have caused so much harm to so many people -- and they are unpunished," she said.

Full Story: Past members of sex abuse commissions tell of struggles with bishops

Source:National Catholic Reporter

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