L'Église catholique et les abus sexuels: une longue série d'échecs

Le cas du cardinal Theodore McCarrick qu'on vient de défroquer montre à quel point l'Église catholique peine à composer avec les cas d'abus sexuels. The Atlantic revient sur ce lourd historique en s'inspirant d'abord des réflexions d'un autre cardinal, Seán O'Malley. Il s'exprimait avant la décision du Vatican dans le dossier McCarrick et affirmait sa confiance dans le pape François.

 "O’Malley believes that the pope understands how important the issue of sexual abuse is: “His encounter with victims has made a very profound impact on his life and his ministry,” the cardinal said. And yet, the Church faces enormous structural and cultural barriers to establishing worldwide policies and procedures to deal with abuse, which O’Malley acknowledged. As for the meeting in February, “My worry is that the expectations in the United States are that this meeting is going to address all of our local concerns here,” he said, “which is not necessarily the case.”

The majority of known child sexual-abuse cases in the U.S. Catholic Church took place in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Major national news outlets began covering those stories by the early ’90s, around the time that O’Malley got assigned to his first troubled parish. The Boston Globe’s now famous Spotlight investigation in 2002 made it clear that clergy sexual abuse was endemic, and the cover-up extensive. Within months, the U.S. bishops’ conference had passed the first of a series of reforms that overhauled the way adults in Catholic spaces can interact with children."

  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/sean-omalley-pope-francis-catholic-church-sex-abuse/582658/