Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, in an interview on the CBS news programme “60 Minutes” said that the Vatican must “urgently” address the case of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, the only US bishop to have been convicted of failing to report an instance of clergy sex abuse to the authorities.
Cardinal O’Malley indicated that the commission on sex abuse that he leads is developing protocols to assess bishops’ compliance with zero tolerance policies towards clergy sex abuse.
When asked about the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (CDF) investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), Cardinal O’Malley said it was “a disaster.”
The CDF formally opened its investigation in 2012, to assess whether the LCWR nuns were straying too far from traditional doctrine, and involved in social justice issues to the detriment of advancing church teaching on sexuality and abortion. The nuns always rejected these claims.
CBS’s Norah O’Donnell noted that Cardinal O’Malley knew Pope Francis before his election and asked, “Did you know he would be this kind of a leader?” O’Malley replied, “I knew that he would be different. I am delighted that he is beyond my expectations.”
Asked whether the Church discriminates against women by requiring a male-only priesthood, Cardinal O’Malley replied: “If I were founding a Church, I’d love to have women priests. But Christ founded it, and what he has given us is something different.”
Photo: CNS
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