Pope Francis meeting with American bishops on Thursday at the Vatican.
CreditVatican Medi, via Reuters
By Jason Horowitz
Sept. 13, 2018
VATICAN CITY — It was not the warmest of Vatican welcomes.
Amid a spiraling sexual abuse crisis that has threatened the pontificate of Pope Francis, America’s top Roman Catholic prelates met with the pontiff on Thursday. They were seeking a robust investigation into how Vatican officials permitted one of America’s top bishops, former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to climb the hierarchy despite apparently knowing of allegations of his sexual misconduct.
But before the Americans could enter the pope’s private office, the church revealed that an investigation had in fact begun — just perhaps not the one they were expecting.
While a Vatican statement announcing the noon meeting began by listing the American delegation, including the secretary general of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Msgr. Brian Bransfield, it concluded with the revelation that Francis had accepted the resignation of the monsignor’s cousin, Bishop Michael J. Bransfield of West Virginia.
The pope, the statement said, has named a temporary administrator for the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese, Archbishop William E. Lori. Archbishop Lori promptly declared in his own statement that Francis had instructed him “to conduct an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment of adults against Bishop Bransfield.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the Vatican had released no other statement about the meeting. The bishops conference released a short statement from its president, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.
“We are grateful to the Holy Father for receiving us in audience,” it said. “We shared with Pope Francis our situation in the United States — how the Body of Christ is lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse. He listened very deeply from the heart. It was a lengthy, fruitful, and good exchange.”
The cardinal said they had prayed together and “look forward to actively continuing our discernment together identifying the most effective next steps.”
It was not clear whether the Americans actually requested the Vatican investigation they had previously demanded. A spokesman for the bishops conference declined to say.
But some analysts said the most important thing about the meeting was it showed that, despite all the upheaval in the church and the criticism of Francis coming from the United States, the American church was still in communion with Rome.
“This means that they came together, that there is the good will to tackle this problem together,” said Andrea Tornielli, a veteran Vatican expert in Rome.
The meeting came as Pope Francis faces a major challenge to his papacy, and to his legacy.
As the church sought to address revelations about Cardinal McCarrick last month, the pope’s former ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, published an extraordinary j’accuse letter calling for the pope’s resignation. The archbishop accused the pope of having covered up then-Cardinal McCarrick’s history of sexually abusing seminarians.
The publication of the letter, smack in the middle of the pope’s closely watched trip to Ireland, where the church has been ravaged by an abuse crisis, opened up a long simmering civil war in the Vatican between ideological supporters of Francis and his critics.
The letter struck at Francis’s chief vulnerability: his record on confronting sexual abuse, on which critics say his actions have not kept pace with his promises.
On Wednesday, the pope took the highly unusual step of summoning presidents of bishops’ conferences around the world to come to the Vatican for a February meeting on the sex abuse crisis.
The action was in keeping with the pope’s vision of a collegial, bottom-up church that empowers local bishops. But survivors of sexual abuse were skeptical that some of the very bishops who had failed to take action to protect children and vulnerable adults in their dioceses for decades would suddenly take on the mission of accountability.
For many survivors, any redress must come from Rome. The American bishops, too, sought concrete measures from the Vatican.
“We are faced with a spiritual crisis that requires not only spiritual conversion, but practical changes to avoid repeating the sins and failures of the past,” Cardinal DiNardo said in a statement last month. He then called for “a full investigation of questions surrounding Archbishop McCarrick.”
“These answers,” Cardinal DiNardo said, “are necessary to prevent a recurrence, and so help to protect minors, seminarians, and others who are vulnerable in the future. We will therefore invite the Vatican to conduct an Apostolic Visitation to address these questions.”
But in the meantime, Mr. DiNardo has himself come under scrutiny.
On Wednesday night, on the eve of the Americans’ meeting with the pope, The Associated Press reported that two people had accused Cardinal DiNardo of failing to stop a former priest who was arrested this week on sexual abuse charges.
The priest, Manuel LaRosa-Lopez, 60, was arrested on Tuesday in Texas and accused of having molested two people when they were teenagers. The complainants say they reported their accusations to Cardinal DiNardo.
Cardinal DiNardo has clashed with Francis in the past.
In 2015, America Magazine, a Jesuit publication, reported that he was one of 13 cardinals to send a letter to the pope on the opening day of the Synod on the Family which raised objections to his organization of the gathering.
But it was Bishop Bransfield who drew the attention on Thursday.
The bishop, who is from Philadelphia and began his career as a priest there, was accused in the 2012 trial of another cleric of sexually abusing teenage boys in the late 1970s and 1980s. He denied it, claimed vindication and continued serving as a priest until last week, when he turned 75, the age when bishops must offer their retirement.
On Thursday, Francis announced that he had accepted the resignation, and Archbishop Lori of Baltimore, the temporary administrator appointed in West Virginia, announced that he had set up a telephone hotline for any complaints about Bishop Bransfield.
“I further pledge to conduct a thorough investigation in search of the truth into the troubling allegations against Bishop Bransfield and to work closely with the clergy, religious and lay leaders of the diocese until the appointment of a new bishop,” he said in a statement.
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