The fol­low­ing is an open let­ter to one of the world’s most in­flu­en­tial lead­ers. All thoughts and opin­ions ex­pressed here­in be­long sole­ly to the au­thor and in no way re­flect those of the T&T Guardian or Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed.

To His Ho­li­ness, Pope Fran­cis, Bish­op of Rome, Vic­ar of Christ.

Most Holy Fa­ther,

I am but one mem­ber of the world­wide Ro­man Catholic com­mu­ni­ty; one voice amongst many. And though I do not pre­sume to speak on be­half of the one bil­lion-plus ad­her­ents of the faith, I have been moved by re­cent events to write to you and ex­press my dis­ap­point­ment, re­spect­ful­ly, of course. It is my sin­cere hope that the Lenten sea­son will add a mea­sure of grav­i­tas to this epis­tle.

The sex abuse scan­dal con­tin­ues to cast a fore­bod­ing shad­ow over our church. Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing last Au­gust’s dam­ag­ing re­port on the Penn­syl­va­nia Dio­cese, which re­vealed not on­ly the en­dem­ic na­ture of these crimes but the ex­tent to which the cov­er-ups were per­pe­trat­ed, you con­vened a spe­cial con­fer­ence at the Vat­i­can which fi­nal­ly took place three week­ends ago. In at­ten­dance were some 200 car­di­nals, all gath­ered for the pur­pose of dis­cussing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures to pro­tect mi­nors from preda­to­ry cler­gy­men. The con­fer­ence was con­clud­ed af­ter just four days—four days filled with florid speech­es and to­ken promis­es…with the church no clos­er emerg­ing from the shad­ow of this dis­gust­ing, long­stand­ing scan­dal and in­to the light of re­demp­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.

In all hon­esty, I didn’t know what to ex­pect from this meet­ing. A prob­lem that has gone on for decades (if not longer) sure­ly couldn’t be solved dur­ing the course of a sin­gle week­end. But I can’t be­lieve that the best you and your priest­ly fra­ter­ni­ty were able to come up with was a “hand­book” con­tain­ing guide­lines on how to han­dle cas­es of abuse. This speaks to the core of the church’s hubris—the er­ro­neous be­lief that it is a law un­to it­self. Crimes were com­mit­ted, Your Ho­li­ness, crimes against those most vul­ner­a­ble, com­mit­ted by those most trust­ed. The rep­u­ta­tion of the many who dili­gent­ly serve has been brought low by the ac­tions of the few who served their sick de­sires. Priests were once con­sid­ered to be of un­ques­tion­able char­ac­ter. But nowa­days they are just as like­ly to be viewed with sus­pi­cion, adding an­oth­er lay­er of hard­ship to an al­ready dif­fi­cult vo­ca­tion. It begs the ques­tion of whether this has con­tributed to the short­age of sem­i­nar­i­ans and the de­cline of church mem­ber­ship and at­ten­dance.

Tools of Sa­tan

You de­scribed these vile acts as “tools of Sa­tan”. In keep­ing with that anal­o­gy, I’m start­ing to won­der if the in­ten­tion of the Cu­ria is to bury this “tool­box” in the hope that all will be for­got­ten in time. Are you sim­ply wait­ing for the gen­er­a­tion of abuse sur­vivors to die out so that the mem­o­ry of this dark stain will slip in­to the an­nals of his­to­ry, to be treat­ed with the same de­tach­ment as the church’s silent ac­cep­tance of slav­ery in the new world? Even worse—and it pains me to even en­ter­tain this no­tion—but is it that the Vat­i­can’s slow pace and clum­sy han­dling of the scan­dal hides an in­sid­i­ous pur­pose? Could it be that some of the for­mer par­tic­i­pants in this con­spir­a­cy of si­lence now serve in the up­per ech­e­lons of the church’s hi­er­ar­chy?

Car­di­nal Rein­hard Marx, the arch­bish­op of Mu­nich, even ad­mit­ted dur­ing the con­fer­ence that, “Files that could have doc­u­ment­ed the ter­ri­ble deeds and named those re­spon­si­ble were de­stroyed or not even cre­at­ed.” Cui bono, Pa­ter?

Whether this was the re­sult of priests look­ing out for each oth­er or bish­ops safe­guard­ing their turf, it is clear that those con­cerns were placed above the well-be­ing of the con­gre­ga­tion. The hypocrisy of the church has thus been laid bare. You your­self have re­peat­ed­ly be­seeched the Ro­man Catholic com­mu­ni­ty for for­give­ness while avoid­ing the re­dress of jus­tice for the vic­tims. In­deed it is para­mount for the church to work to­wards en­sur­ing that such a scan­dal nev­er oc­curs again, but it can’t do so with­out prop­er­ly aton­ing for the mis­takes of the past. And that, Your Ho­li­ness, is where you have fal­tered in both your lead­er­ship and in the ex­er­cise of pa­pal au­thor­i­ty.

At the risk of over­stat­ing the ob­vi­ous—a cen­tral tenet of our faith is the Sacra­ment of Penance. We are all called up­on to con­fess our sins and ex­press con­tri­tion; then, and on­ly then, may we re­ceive ab­so­lu­tion. This tri­umvi­rate is in­sep­a­ra­ble. But you and oth­er church of­fi­cials have on­ly un­der­tak­en the sec­ond com­po­nent with the ex­pec­ta­tion of re­ceiv­ing the third. To date, there has nev­er been a full and un­con­di­tion­al con­fes­sion. There have been some dis­clo­sures, along with the iso­lat­ed con­vic­tion—as was the re­cent cas­es in­volv­ing Aus­tralian Car­di­nal, George Pell; and French Car­di­nal, Philippe Bar­barin—but the fact re­mains that the ma­jor­i­ty of the of­fend­ers (and the con­spir­a­tors who en­abled them) have es­caped pros­e­cu­tion. They were al­lowed to live out the rest of their lives in rel­a­tive peace while their vic­tims had to bear the trau­ma of the abuse; most times in si­lence.

It will be fol­ly to pre­sume that the Ro­man Catholic Church will sur­vive based sole­ly on the faith and obe­di­ence of its fol­low­ers; the num­bers say oth­er­wise. The church runs the risk of be­ing caught stand­ing still in a world that is con­stant­ly chang­ing. This isn’t a de­bate about the virtue of dog­ma…this is about jus­tice—plain and sim­ple, no more and no less.

Last week you an­nounced the open­ing of the Vat­i­can archives for the reign of Pope Pius XII (1939 to 1958), to shed light on the Re­ich­skonko­r­dat—the Con­cor­dat be­tween the Holy See and the Ger­man Re­ich, and to de­ter­mine whether he did enough to pro­tect Eu­ro­pean Jews from the Holo­caust. You can use that same au­thor­i­ty, as vest­ed in your of­fice, to or­der every dio­cese with records per­tain­ing to the abuse scan­dal to make them ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. This is some­thing that nei­ther of your pre­de­ces­sors—John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI—chose to do. But un­der­tak­ing this ac­tion will send the un­equiv­o­cal mes­sage that the church is tru­ly com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy. And it would fi­nal­ly bring clo­sure to those in our church who have suf­fered for far too long.

An en­tire gen­er­a­tion of Catholics has grown up know­ing of the church’s shame. Don’t let it be passed on­to the next one.

I have the ho­n­our to pro­fess my­self with the most pro­found re­spect, your Ho­li­ness’ most obe­di­ent and hum­ble ser­vant.