Press Release
18 November 2020.
After the Spotlight revelations in 2002 we now have the 400+ page McCarrick Report. It took 2 years to complete. Its 30 Chapters detail who-knew-what-when as Former Cardinal McCarrick was promoted again and again despite many reports of his sexual activities with seminarians.
It is clear to the world that clerical sex abuse is a systemic problem in the Roman Catholic Church, with the USA, Australia, Germany, Chile and Ireland just a few of the better known examples.
This report and the Spotlight revelations indirectly are recommendations. They call for
- More reports, for example into the founder of the Legionaries of Christ and the appointment of Bishop Barros in Chile
- A radical review of the process for appointing bishops
- The need to involve lay people in decision making
If you don’t learn from your mistakes you are bound to repeat them.
The signs are ominous: The McCarrick Report was issued without a Press Conference, without any Question & Answer session and without making a single recommendation. The German bishops wanted to bring some lay people on their visit to the Vatican and were told very clearly that lay people had no business arriving with their bishops!
Colm Holmes
Chair, We Are Church International
E
M +353 86 606 3636
W www.we-are-church.org
We Are Church International (WAC) founded in Rome in 1996, is a global coalition of national church reform groups. It is committed to the renewal of the Roman Catholic Church based on the Second Vatican Council