VATICAN CITY | Pope Francis has identified the Vatican’s top sex abuse investigator and a close U.S. ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit that has turned into a high-stakes credibility test following a new eruption of the scandal in the U.S. and elsewhere this year.
Abuse survivors and women employed at the Vatican will also contribute to the preparatory committee. Notably absent from the lineup released on Friday was Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who leads the pope’s sex abuse advisory commission, though one of his members, the Rev. Hans Zollner, is the point-person for the group.
In addition to Zollner, the committee includes Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, for a decade the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor, Francis appointee Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich and Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, a member of Francis’ key cardinal adviser group.
Francis called to leaders of the world’s bishops’ conferences to the Vatican Feb. 21-24 after the abuse scandal erupted in his native South America and again in the U.S. and he botched the case of a Chilean bishop implicated in cover-up.
The importance of the meeting grew exponentially after the Vatican directed U.S. bishops earlier this month not to vote on proposed new measures to investigate sexual misconduct or cover-up within their ranks.
The Vatican has yet to explain why it blocked the vote on a U.S. code of conduct for bishops and a lay-led board to investigate them, though the proposals were only given to the Vatican at the last minute and were said to contain legal problems. The head of the U.S. bishops conference, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, said the Holy See wanted to delay any vote until after the February global summit.
However, it is unlikely that such a diverse group of churchmen, some representing national churches that continue to deny or downplay the scandal, will over the course of four days come up with any universal proposals that come close to the accountability norms that U.S. bishops were seeking.
Cupich has said he was disappointed by the Vatican’s decision, but at the time of the U.S. bishops’ meeting, he proposed they go ahead and debate the measures and even came up with a revised proposal himself.
