This spring, as the clergy sexual abuse crisis intensified in Europe, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston decided to write a letter to Pope Benedict XVI.The Vatican was under attack for its defensive response, and O’Malley, who has led three of the US dioceses hit hardest by the abuse scandal, wanted to share his thoughts.
“I was concerned about the way things were unraveling in Europe, and the church’s response,’’ he said in a recent interview on the topic.
O’Malley would not reveal what he told the pope. It was a private letter, he said.
But Benedict, after receiving advice and criticism from multiple quarters, changed his tone. On a plane to Portugal, he told reporters that the greatest threat to the church came from within, and that “forgiveness does not exclude justice.’’
And in Portugal, where O’Malley joined the pope on his trip to Fatima, O’Malley learned that Benedict had named him to a high-level delegation of prelates from the United States, Canada, and England asked to assist the church in Ireland, which has suffered enormous damage from the scandal.
At home a few days later, O’Malley blogged that he was struck by the pope’s comments on the crisis.
“The Holy Father was very clear that he was not dismissing, as some have, the sexual abuse crisis as a media blitz, but it is squarely a problem we have to own up to and deal with,’’ the cardinal wrote.
O’Malley’s long record on dealing with sexual abuse is not without critics, who say he differs from other bishops more in matters of style than substance, and who are unhappy that O’Malley has not always taken actions sought by victim advocates and prosecutors.
But he has also been praised by many for settling complex litigation, reaching out to victims, and adopting a humble and apologetic tone when discussing the abuse issue.
Benedict tapped O’Malley to work with the Archdiocese of Dublin; as luck would have it, the cardinal was stranded in Dublin on his trip back from Portugal because of volcanic ash.
The cardinal and his priest secretary spent a quiet day in the capital city, visiting St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, as well as Trinity College, where they saw the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels created by Celtic monks more than 1,000 years ago.
O’Malley’s assignment in Dublin, which marks his fourth intervention in a diocese reeling from clergy sexual abuse, holds a special significance for O’Malley, an Irish-American whose forbears emigrated from Western Ireland and who speaks fondly of his heritage in homilies and conversation.
In the interview, he reflected on his “great sense of sadness’’ over the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church, and about his own — and Boston’s — deep emotional connection to that country.
“Our ties are very close sentimentally,’’ he said. “. . . We are all anxious to try and bring healing to our brothers and sisters in Ireland, who are suffering so much.’’
The cardinal knows firsthand the Irish bond with the United States, particularly with Boston, where legions of Irish fled in the mid-19th and early-20th centuries to escape famine and poverty.
O’Malley’s father’s family came from County Mayo, and the future cardinal spent time there as a teenager in the early 1960s, visiting his relatives.
At the time Ireland was a largely rural country with thatched roofs and few cars, he said. “The phone book for the whole island,’’ O’Malley said, “was just a little pamphlet.’’ He was there when President John F. Kennedy visited in 1963, the same year Pope Paul VI was elected.
Today, the severity of the sexual abuse crisis in the Irish church — five bishops have resigned and some 13,000 people who were victimized in church-run residential institutions for children have received compensation, according to the Associated Press — resonates in remote corners of the world, O’Malley said.
That’s because Irish missionaries have helped build the global church and in so doing have raised the profile of the Irish church, he said.
“Ireland is a very small country but . . . its footprint in the missions is enormous,’’ he said. “. . . It certainly shows the world that this is not just an American problem. This is a problem that is a human problem and needs to be dealt with everywhere, in the most open way possible.’’
O’Malley’s critics say he has not always been so open — they are unhappy, for example, that he has not released the names of all priests accused of abuse, and that, when he was bishop of Fall River, he did not turn over files sought by the local prosecutor, and that he once allowed an accused priest to work as a missionary.
But O’Malley has said that in Boston he intends to release the names of priests facing credible allegations, and that in Fall River he tried to fully cooperate with law enforcement and that he had been assured that the priest who was serving as a missionary would not work with children.
In the interview, O’Malley said that, over time, he has learned “by trial and error’’ the vital steps: “to do things in a transparent way; meeting with victims and their families to try to understand the impact this has had on their lives; and then to have policies that people feel good about.’’
The greatest challenge, he said, lies in trying to deal with cases from long ago. But he said he has also leaned on laypeople for help.
“That help has been invaluable to me,’’ he said.
The cardinal said he now plans to tap his highly regarded top aide on sexual abuse in Boston, the Rev. John J. Connolly Jr., to staff his work in Dublin, which he said he hopes will benefit both Catholics in Ireland and the church as a whole.
“It’s a way for the Irish church to reflect on what has happened and what needs to happen, and also a way to be able to bring outside eyes to the situation, and to help the Holy See to have a better understanding of what the situation in Ireland is,’’ he said.