Pope Francis is due to take stock on Monday with a delegation from the French Bishops’ Conference. A meeting where it will deal in particular with the Sauvé report on child criminality in the Church and the decisions taken by the episcopate.
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Is the Vatican distancing itself from the findings of the report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase)? A delegation from the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) is received Monday, December 13 by Pope Francis. A meeting in December in Rome to make a general point with the French episcopate and where this year the Sauvé report on child crime in the Catholic Church will be discussed. But the Pope seems less convinced today of the relevance of the report.
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Just hours after the report’s publication in early October, the Pope expressed “pain and sadness for the victims” but above all “his shame” for the church’s inability to put victims at the center of its concerns for too long. The empathy is real and sincere, but two months later on the plane back from Greece on December 6, Pope Francis changes his tone: “When doing this kind of study, you have to be careful with the interpretation. A historical situation has to be interpreted with the context of the time.”
In the meantime, Pope Francis has heard a lot of criticism of the Sauvé report and has become more cautious. According to some, the Church of France is doing too much. The bishops gathered in Lourdes made an act of repentance with positions which also engaged the universal Church. The Vatican cannot accept it. By asserting the systemic nature of the attacks, did the bishops want to wet the whole church?
At the end of November, members of the Catholic Academy denounced the “flawed methodology”. According to this unofficial body which brings together Catholic intellectuals, there are also “serious deficiencies” and recommendations “questionable” in the report. One of the members of the Ciase, Nathalie Bajos, met Thursday in Rome the academic Hans Zollner, expert advising Pope Francis on the protection of minors. The occasion, in particular, “to explain to him in detail our methodology and main results”, she told AFP.
“We will of course ask the Pope again to be able to receive the Ciase”, explained CEF spokesperson Hugues de Woillemont to AFP. The members of the commission were to be received by Pope Francis on Thursday, December 9, but the meeting was postponed, sine die, officially for reasons of tight agenda for the sovereign pontiff. But if the Pope receives the members of the Sauvé Commission right away, he would give them some sort of guarantee. And if it does not receive them, it would be a disavowal for the French bishops who fully endorsed the conclusions of the report.