While Pope Francis is getting “memed” on the internet for twirling a soccer ball with a member of the Circus of Cuba, Catholics are still waiting for His Holiness to outline concrete steps forward that will address decades (centuries?) of systemic sex abuse in the Church, Vice is reporting. And it looks like they’ll have to wait a little longer.
Though the Pope has made increasingly “scalding” comments — “The Church’s credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts made to deny or conceal them” — there still isn’t a clear way forward for followers who feel abandoned, disenfranchised, or who are victims themselves.
Though Vice acknowledges Francis is moving in the right direction by telling 250 bishops that they can’t succeed by “issuing stern decrees or by simply creating new committees or improving flow charts, as if we were in charge of a department of human resources,” there still is a general feeling amongst many followers that these are “just words.”
The real test will come in February, when a summit of bishops is scheduled to meet in Vatican City to sketch out solutions and a way forward. Until then.
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