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A group of protestors stand outside the Shrine of Our Lady of Valverde in the southern Italian city of Enna Aug. 22, 2024, to protest the local clergy’s role in covering up clerical sexual abuse. (OSV News photo/courtesy Antonio Messina)

Nose to ground: Identifying the ‘root cause’ of sexual abuse in the church


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OSV News Filed Under: Child & Youth Protection, Commentary

The subject always deserves consideration, but two recent articles on sex abuse within the church are worth discussion. The first, published by Crux, declares — sadly, to the surprise of no one — “Abuse crisis in the Catholic Church shows no signs of abating.” The second came via OSV News: Catholics in the Sicilian city of Enna are protesting a diocesan cover-up of abuses against minors, committed by a local priest while he was still a seminarian, between 2009 and 2013.

The Italian court found Father Guiseppe Rugolo guilty of “the sexual abuse of two young teenagers … fully aware that he could count on the support of the religious leadership,” adding that Bishop Rosario Gisana of the Diocese of Piazza Armerina was “well aware for many years of the reports made concerning the abuse suffered by [these victims].” Damningly, audio recordings entered into evidence at Rugolo’s trial revealed the bishop admitting to covering up the abuse.

One victim, Antonio Messina, claims to have sent a letter and two CDs containing the bishop’s admissions, to Pope Francis, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Dicastery for the Clergy and the Dicastery of Bishops. OSV News is currently awaiting responses to their requests for confirmation.

While visiting Sicily last year, I was struck by how many churches were not just empty but locked up, with door handles removed. Many churches had been repurposed as museums, concert venues or other secular gathering spots. Explaining the closures was easy: even in Italy, church attendance is dramatically down and gray of head. Fingers pointing at materialism and media must ultimately point to the church’s own miserable failures of leadership and its inability to inspire trust and confidence within a laity that may generously be described as “disappointed” or “disillusioned” with her efforts on many fronts, but especially on the issue of sexual abuse.

On that front, “disgusted” might be the more brutal-but-accurate characterization.

In the Sicily story, we once again see minors being preyed upon and predators being protected. Messina claims he tried to speak with his bishop, only to be dismissed, told to “go away and forget everything I had been through,” by the judicial vicar of the Diocese of Piazza Armerina, Msgr. Vincenzo Murgano.

It has been two decades since the Boston Globe detailed widespread abuses amid Catholic clergy and the willingness of bishops to hide crimes and reassign predator priests. Since then, the problem has been revealed as worldwide and shamefully vast. While some admittedly successful programs have been put into place to protect children from abuse, the predation against older teens, seminarians, religious men and women and others who might be classified as “vulnerable adults” seems to generate less concern from our leadership.

Only this summer, Catholic journalists inquiring about the continued liturgical and instructional use of artwork by Father Marko Rupnik — under investigation after being credibly accused of sexually and spiritually abusing two dozen religious woman and at least one man — were told by Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Communication, that “we’re not talking about abuse of minors. We are talking [about] a story that we don’t know,” adding, “who am I to judge the Rupnik stories?”

In case anyone still doubted the abiding disgust of the laity, Ruffini’s cavalier, “we’re not talking about the abuse of minors” should put that to rest.

At Crux, Charles Collins notes several recent international cases of abuse and cover-up and wonders whether “the church will ever really address the root of the problem.”

Ah, the root! Some argue that priestly celibacy is the source of the rot. Comfortable with the erroneous idea that sexual abuse is a matter of lust, rather than a perversion of power, they ignore the fact that non-celibates, like ministers and rabbis and imams and married parents, perpetrate sex crimes.

Some argue that if women could be ordained, abuses would cease. Well, females might arguably do better at prosecuting bad priests, but that’s a big unknown. Certainly, women are human, and attracted to power, and the heady privileges and protections of clericalism (introduced by some as the “root cause” of it all) could prove as enjoyable to female clergy as it has been to men.

The mystery of sin is ever before us. We’ve known since Calvary — when the crucified Christ was surrounded by criminals — that where there is great holiness, evil is always nearby. One space-limited column is insufficient to the task of identifying the resilient poison that has plagued and is pillaging our Body. Its roots are legion.

Yet I maintain that if we truly want to find and destroy those roots, our leadership (and laity) must begin with noses to the ground — not as inspectors or detectives, but as prostate penitents begging forgiveness for myriad sins of abuse, neglectful cover-ups and more, and for the wisdom to finally recognize the roots of their (our) sins, that they might be torn from this Body.

Liturgical penance makes room for Truth and Wisdom. Both of which are needed — along with prayer and fasting — to make this kind go out.

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