Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to the People of God
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
"If one member suffers, all
suffer together with it" (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul
forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by
many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience
perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes
that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the
victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of
believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg
pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient.
Looking
ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to
prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of
their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their
families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our
commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.
1. If one
member suffers...
In recent days, a report was made
public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims
of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests
over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that
most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have
come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these
wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these
atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds
never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to
heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced.
But their outcry was more
powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve
it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord
heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. Mary's song is
not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord
remembers the promise he made to our fathers: "he has scattered the proud
in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up
the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent
away empty" (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style of
life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite.
With shame and repentance, we
acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have
been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the
gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little
ones; we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger
when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified
with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed: "How much filth
there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to
belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much self-complacency!
Christ's betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and
blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces
his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison
-- Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)" (Ninth Station).
2. ... all
suffer together with it
The extent and the gravity of all
that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive
and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of
conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not
enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our
brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the
past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the
deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and
future history.
And this in an environment where conflicts, tensions and above
all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand to
protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such
solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of
any person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption,
especially spiritual corruption. The latter is "a comfortable and
self-satisfied form of blindness.
Everything then appears acceptable:
deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for
'even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light' (2 Cor 11:14)"
(Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul's exhortation to suffer with those who
suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of
Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen 4:9).
I am conscious of the effort and
work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the
necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of
children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and
ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable.
We have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary,
yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care
in the present and future.
Together with those efforts,
every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social
change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal
conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint John Paul II
liked to say: "If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of
Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he
wished to be identified" (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To see things as
the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion
of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help.
I invite the
entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and
fasting, following the Lord's command.1 This can awaken our conscience and
arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that says "never
again" to every form of abuse.
It is impossible to think of a
conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active
participation of all the members of God's People. Indeed, whenever we have
tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small
elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualties
and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and
ultimately, without lives. 2 This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of
understanding the Church's authority, one common in many communities where
sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the
case with clericalism, an approach that "not only nullifies the character
of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace
that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people".3
Clericalism, whether fostered by
priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial
body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are
condemning today. To say "no" to abuse is to say an emphatic
"no" to all forms of clericalism.
It is always helpful to remember
that "in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never
completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved
alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into
account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human
community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people"
(Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). Consequently, the only way that we have to respond
to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task
regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a
people and a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and
mistakes with a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from
within. Without the active participation of all the Church's members,
everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will
not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic
change.
The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God's
People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners
imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we
will come up with actions that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel.
For "whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover
the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of
creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and
words with new meaning for today's world" (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).
It is essential that we, as a
Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the
atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted
with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us
beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin
helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the
past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a
journey of renewed conversion.
Likewise, penance and prayer will
help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people's sufferings and to
overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of
those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by
children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and
thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the
judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads
us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will,
and with society in general, to combating all forms of the abuse of power,
sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience. In this way, we can show clearly
our calling to be "a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the
unity of the entire human race" (Lumen Gentium, 1).
"If one member suffers, all
suffer together with it", said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and
penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this
exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice,
prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son's cross.
She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus' side. In this way, she
reveals the way she lived her entire life. When we experience the desolation
caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, "to insist
more upon prayer", seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to
the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first
of the disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the
sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to
discover the model of a true follower of Christ.
May the Holy Spirit grant us the
grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these
crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.
