The Pope and the Sexual Abuse Scandal

Pope Benedict’s approach to the clerical sexual abuse scandal has been, in the eyes of many, inadequate at best and harmful at worst. From the pope’s directive in 2001 (when he was just a cardinal) instructing bishops to keep pedophilia investigations secret to his failure to properly respond to increasingly ardent waves of people claiming abuse by priests, the Vatican’s credibility in terms of willingness and ability to deal with sexual abuse is almost non-existent. The Church’s stance has long been that its first priority is to maintain the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,â€� but its propensity to merely transfer, rather than remove, confirmed child molesters is a difficult cross to carry. Perhaps more significantly, the repeated lack of punishment afforded to officials who fail to report or who even actively cover up abuse continues to damage the Pope’s (and, by extension, the Vatican’s) reputation worldwide.