Apollyon

Pope Francis himself has taken steps in the right direction, mandating that the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith take charge of such accusations and then, after the CDF said it couldn’t do it, transferring responsibility to the four Vatican offices charged with overseeing bishops and other ecclesiastical superiors. In 2016, his apostolic letter “As a Loving Mother” lowered the bar for removing bishops from office, from malice in stewardship to inability or incapacity to do the right thing.

For all that, the Vatican officials in these offices have dragged their feet in establishing procedures for removing a bishop and making these known and available.

Pope Francis on Thursday (Feb. 21) opened a highly anticipated four-day meeting on his church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis by calling on the assembled bishops and other Catholic leaders to “hear the cry of the little ones who plead for justice” and be “concrete.”

“The holy People of God look to us, and expect from us not simple and predictable condemnations, but concrete and effective measures to be undertaken. We need to be concrete,” Francis said.