ROME (KRT) — Pope John Paul II on Monday summoned U.S. cardinals to the Vatican next week to discuss the sex scandals roiling the Catholic Church — an extraordinary signal of how serious the pontiff now considers the crisis.
The call to Rome of the eight American cardinals who lead archdioceses — including Chicago’s Francis George — amounted to a dramatic departure from the pope’s public reticence on an issue that has shaken the credibility of the church’s American leadership.
Church observers could not name another instance where a pope summoned the American cardinals on such short notice to address a specific issue.
The Vatican’s announcement followed by just days a lunch meeting between the pope and leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in which they discussed the American church’s handling of priests accused of sexual abuse.
Leading the delegation to the Vatican was the conference president, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, a Chicago native who as head of the diocese of Belleville, Ill., has actively addressed the scandal.
Gregory “relayed to the Holy Father very honestly what the situation is in the American church — that it is a very painful, significant moment for the church,” said Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., the vice president of the conference who also attended the lunch with the pope last Tuesday.
Since the latest sex-abuse scandal erupted with disclosures in Boston that offending priests had been quietly shuttled from parish to parish, John Paul II had made only two brief references to the issue. One came in a single paragraph in his 22-page pre-Easter letter to priests in which he wrote that they are affected by “the sins of some of our brothers” who have succumbed to “the most grievous forms” of evil.
As recently as last week, the pope expressed “fraternal solidarity” with U.S. clergymen over the widening scandal and made clear that he thought it was up to them to clean up the mess created by fellow priests.
His summons on Monday sent a very different signal. “The fact that the Vatican is calling the cardinals together betokens a recognition … that this is a problem affecting the entire church nationally,” said Scott Appleby, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.
“Calling the cardinals together to talk about something is not extraordinary,” Cardinal George said in an interview Monday night. “What is extraordinary is the moment. … The more we discuss this, the better off we are in general.”
Despite the extraordinary nature of next week’s session, church experts cautioned against predicting immediate, fundamental changes from it.
“There is a danger of having excessively high expectations of what can come from this meeting,” said Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of America, the national Catholic weekly magazine. “Obviously, the pope cannot micromanage the priest personnel policies of every diocese in the U.S. But the cardinals could float ideas with the pope and get his reactions.”