An Irish woman raped as a teen by a priest said last Friday some clergy sex abuse victims are questioning motives behind a Vatican-backed symposium, where she hoped the pope and other Catholic leaders would ask for forgiveness for those who failed to protect children.
Marie Collins told reporters at a news conference promoting the four-day symposium this week at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome for bishops and other Catholic leaders that it would be “wonderful” for survivors and for a wounded church if Benedict XVI publicly sought forgiveness for church leaders who put loyalty to their institution ahead of safety of children.
But she said that after wrestling with whether to accept the invitation to speak she decided that it was important for her “to speak and be heard” by church hierarchy.
The opening keynote speech on Monday at the start of the gathering aiming for “healing and renewal” was to be delivered by Cardinal William Levada, a U.S. churchman who heads the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.
That office, led for decades by Benedict XVI before he was elected pope in 2005, shapes and drives the Vatican’s policy on handling cases of abuse as well as the widespread allegations that church hierarchy, including at the Holy See, systematically tried to hide abuse, including by shuffling clergy from parish to parish.
Among symposium participants was Cardinal Sean Brady, the primate of Ireland’s 4 million Catholics and who in 2010 admitted he helped to conceal the crimes of a serial rapist-priest from Irish authorities in the mid-1970s. He has rejected calls to resign.
Collins, who was repeatedly raped in 1960 by a hospital chaplain while aged 13 and hospitalized, was asked how healing could be achieved when many top officials have refused to take responsibility for cover-ups.
Her attacker wasn’t removed from the priesthood and imprisoned before 1997.
“The most healing thing that could possibly happen in the leadership of the church is to ask forgiveness” for this negligence, she replied. “There is a difference between apologizing and asking for forgiveness. We have had apologies.”
In the Catholic church especially, “forgiveness is so important and I think if we were to be asked that by the church leadership, forgiveness for what has happened in the past ... not for the abusers, but for what happened and what was done by their superiors, I think that would be hugely healing,” Collins said.
Asked if that request applied to the pope, Collins added: “Obviously, if the pope came out and asked forgiveness for the leadership that fell down on their responsibilities, putting their loyalty to the church, to their institution, before the safety of children that would be the most wonderful thing I think for survivors and for the faithful who have been hurt and lost trust and lost respect.”
“I think apologies can be looked on as just words but asking for forgiveness is a much harder thing to do.”
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that a letter from Cardinal Tarciso Bertone, the Holy See’s No. 2, and “approved by the pope” was to be read to the symposium.
He said Benedict had also approved “significant” financial funding for the next three years for a center, to be based in Munich, Germany, the pope’s former diocese, and dedicated to promoting practices to permit rapid intervention in cases of child abuse.
Scicluna, a top official in Cardinal Levada’s congregation, pointed to Benedict’s 2010 letter to Ireland apologizing for chronic child abuse within the Catholic Church.
That letter failed to calm the anger of many victims, who accused the Vatican of ducking its own responsibility in promoting a worldwide culture of cover-up.
In that letter, Benedict “expressed his sorrow at the negligence in leadership,” said Scicluna, a Maltese prelate who is a longtime Vatican official on doctrinal matters.
Countered Collins: “Being sorry is different than asking for forgiveness.”
Scicluna added that: “I understand that by listening to Marie that we need individual leaders to admit when they have been negligent.”