Pope Francis thanked journalists this Saturday (13) for helping to reveal sexual abuse committed within the Catholic Church — which previously tried to cover up the crimes.
The pontiff praised what he called journalism’s mission and said it was vital for reporters to get out of their newsrooms and find out what is happening around the world to combat misinformation often found online.
“Thank you for what we were told was wrong in the Church, for helping us not to sweep under the rug and for the voice you gave victims of abuse,” Francisco said at a ceremony honoring two correspondents — Philip Pullella of Reuters and Valentina Alazraki of Mexico’s Noticieros Televisa—for her long careers covering the Vatican.
About the mission of the reporters, the pontiff added that it is part of it “to explain the world, so that it is less obscure, to make those who inhabit it less afraid of it”. To do this, the pope said journalists need to “escape the tyranny” of always being online. “Not everything can be said in an email, over the phone or through a screen.”
The scandals hit newspaper headlines in 2002 when The Boston Globe ran a series of reports exposing a pattern of abuse of minors by Catholic Church clerics and a pervasive culture of cover-up by the institution. The case was portrayed in the movie Spotlight, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2016.
Since then, episodes have shaken the Church in several countries. More recently, a major investigation in France, released in October, found that the country’s clerics had abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years.
The poll also found that, out of a universe of 115,000 priests and religious officials, the Church harbored between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophiles — a “minimum estimate.” Most victims were boys aged between 10 and 13 years.
After the disclosure of the investigation, commissioned by the Episcopal Conference of France and the Conference of Religious and Religious of Institutes and Congregations, the French Church announced that it will sell diocese assets or resort to loans to compensate victims of pedophilia.
In June, Francisco called the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church a worldwide “catastrophe”. At the time, the Vatican released the most comprehensive review of the institution’s laws in 40 years, tightening the rules against sexual violence.
Since he was elected in 2013, the pope has taken a series of steps to eradicate clerical sexual abuse of minors. In 2019, it issued a decree that made it mandatory for bishops and priests to report suspected sexual abuse and allowed anyone to file complaints directly to the Vatican. If bishops do not report cases of abuse, they may be held jointly responsible for the crime they concealed.
But critics accuse the pontiff of responding too slowly to sexual abuse scandals, lacking empathy for victims and blindly taking the word of his fellow clerics.
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