The Catholic Church, Child Sex Abuse, and Sleazy Politics in the USA

Cuomo Grants Conditional Pardons To Dozens Of Sex Offenders so They Can Vote for Him

"This is hands-down the most egregious public policy misstep Andrew Cuomo has made in his eight years as governor ..."

By AMANDA PRESTIGIA

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) has granted conditional pardons to dozens of convicted sex offenders "deemed too dangerous to be returned to the community" so they can vote, says a report from left-leaning outlet the New York Daily News.

Under a new policy which grants conditional pardons to some 24,000 parolees, at least 77 have been confirmed as convicted sexual predators, including rapists, pedophiles, and a man known as the "voodoo rapist."

Hector Aviles, 61, AKA the voodoo rapist, "was convicted of second-degree rape in Westchester County in 2008 after telling three of his victims — the oldest of whom was 16 — that if they participated in a sexual 'ritual' with him, he could help them with their problems. If they didn’t, he said, bad things would happen to them and their families," says the report.

Records show that the sex offenders were "sent to civil confinement in state psychiatric hospitals after their prison time was up."

Republicans are blasting Cuomo for shamelessly granting the pardons in exchange for more votes. "This is hands-down the most egregious public policy misstep Andrew Cuomo has made in his eight years as governor, and it shows that he will do virtually anything for a few extra votes," slammed Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan of Suffolk County.

"This policy rewards the worst of the worst sexual predators and lowlifes in our society and undermines the integrity of our voting system in every way, shape and form," he added.

That coming from the man responsible for preventing the Statute of Limitations for child sex offenders from entering the 21st century, thereby protecting the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts and their insurance companies from the consequences of their evils. And, leaving thousands of victims in the cold, unable to move on with their lives.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Jim Maxwell, Republican candidate for New York's 25th Congressional District, blasted Cuomo on social media. "This story is sickening," he wrote. "Governor Cuomo pardoned at least 77 sexual predators just so they could go out and vote for him. A good chunk of the newly-pardoned predators were deemed unfit to return to society, so they've been kept in psychiatric hospitals since their release so they can't go out and hurt anyone else."

Maxwell also smacked Albany Democrats, accusing them of stopping "at nothing to maintain their grip on power. They'll even unleash sexual predators just to gain a few votes."

When the program was first announced, it was discovered that at least one of those up for conditional pardon was convicted cop killer Herman Bell.

Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi maintains that the program is all on the up-and-up: "It’s unfortunate that some are using the issue of restoring voting rights to fearmonger," he said.

"'The order was straightforward and put New York on par with Washington, D.C., and 18 other states — including such liberal bastions as Utah' that either never take away voting rights from convicts or restore them upon their release from prison," he added, according to the New York Daily News.

Then why didn't you just give them back their voting rights rather than pardoning them? NY State politics are truly sickening!

Statute-of-Limitation Laws Can Leave Few Choices for Child Sex-Abuse Victims

The sleazy politics of child sexual abuse in the USA

Protesters gather outside the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington on Aug. 30

Brendan Smialowski—AFP/Getty Images

By HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS, Time

Frank Finnegan was 7 years old when he was first molested by a local priest. As a child, he didn’t know how to prevent the repeated assaults, which went on for almost two years, or how to go about reporting the crime. So, like most child sex-abuse victims, he kept quiet. It wasn’t until he was in his late 40s, preparing to send his own children off into the world, that the memories of the trauma became impossible to ignore. “It’s like there was finally room in my brain,” says Finnegan, who now works as a truck driver. So he contacted a lawyer, braced himself and filed suit.

But Finnegan was too late. In Pennsylvania, where he grew up and raised his own family, victims of child sex abuse have only until they turn 30 to bring a civil case. (They have until they turn 50 to pursue criminal charges, but that didn’t help Finnegan, whose abuser was long dead.) As a result, Finnegan’s case was thrown out–not on the merits, but because of the time it took to come to terms with the trauma. There was no avenue to appeal. No one would be held accountable for what happened to Finnegan, now 57. “It’s not right,” he says. “Why is this legal?”

It may not be, in some states, for much longer. Many state lawmakers have opened the door in recent years to belated criminal prosecution, and now several are moving to allow civil suits in decades-old cases. Fifteen states took up bills this year that would change statute-of-limitation laws, making it easier for victims of child sex abuse to seek justice, according to Marci Hamilton, the CEO and academic director of Child USA, a research and advocacy organization. Two states–Michigan and Hawaii–passed such legislation.

The movement to roll back time limits for child sex-abuse lawsuits has been fueled by recent headlines. The sexual abuse of young women by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, allegations of abuse by staff and teachers at top private schools, and the Pennsylvania grand-jury report that described a systemic cover-up of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church are all feeding the fury. From late August to early September, state attorneys general in Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and New York demanded records from Catholic dioceses as part of new investigations into child sexual abuse.

But the fact that the perpetrators often operate under the cover of large institutions means passing new legislation isn’t easy. Powerful constituencies–including the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and the insurance industry, among others–have all lined up to fight bills that could help the many victims of decades-old crimes find justice.

Current state laws governing child sex-abuse cases are all over the map. In Alabama, the age cutoff for victims to file a civil suit is 21. In New York, which has the second largest Catholic population in the U.S., it’s 23. Delaware has no age limit at all. Each of the bills before the 15 state legislatures this year is different, too, according Hamilton’s research. In Michigan, lawmakers passed a narrow bill in May extending from 19 to 28 the age at which victims may file civil suits. In New York, lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have extended the age at which victims could file criminal charges to 28 and civil suits to 50. Governor Andrew Cuomo has vowed to push for the bill next term. (How many years now is that? Gov Cuomo, who just released a bunch of pedophiles and rapists so they could vote for him is going to push through legislation allowing more criminal and civil suits against the same people he released???).

Pennsylvania, which is nearing the end of its legislative session, is considering a bill that would give child victims until age 50 to file civil suits.

A key provision in both the New York and Pennsylvania bills, and the focus of much of the fight nationwide, is what’s known as the “look-back window.” It creates a short period of time, usually one to three years, in which people like Finnegan who have aged out of the statute-of-limitation cutoffs can retroactively file suit. Over the past few years, an intense lobbying battle over these windows has erupted in state capitols.

The New York State Catholic Conference, which represents Catholic bishops in the state, spent $1.81 million from 2012 to the beginning of 2018 lobbying the New York legislature, which is considering a bill with a one-year look-back window, according to an investigation by the Buffalo News. The Catholic Conference in Pennsylvania spent $3 million from 2014 to June of this year, according to state records.

In some states, including Georgia and Michigan, lobbyists have made the case that look-back windows are inherently unfair because victims’ memories become less reliable over time. In addition, many of the clergy or scout leaders they’re accusing of abuse are long dead. The point of statute-of-limitation laws is to protect the accused from spurious claims made after memory or evidence may no longer be considered reliable. But there is evidence to suggest victims, like Finnegan, take decades to come to terms with their abuse. A 2014 study from Germany, which included 1,050 subjects, found that men and women were 52 years old, on average, when they first reported child sex abuse. There’s no comparable U.S. study.

Other opponents of look-back windows have made an overtly financial case, arguing that such provisions would result in nothing more than a payday for trial lawyers. In New York, Timothy Dolan, Cardinal and Archbishop of New York and the former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has suggested that measures allowing retroactive lawsuits would crush the church with expensive litigation. During a visit to the state capitol in March, Dolan described the look-back window as “toxic” and “strangling.”

Toxic and strangling... almost describes child sex abuse.

Church officials see Minnesota and Delaware, two states that have passed laws with look-back windows, as cautionary tales. Both states saw an uptick in lawsuits alleging child sex abuse, including hundreds against Catholic clergy, after the window opened–roughly 850 in Minnesota and more than 100 in Delaware. Dioceses in both states, facing the prospect of paying steep settlements to victims, claimed they had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. Victims’ lawyers argue that Catholic dioceses around the country have filed for bankruptcy as a legal tool to shield church assets from settlements.

Top lobbyists for the church and insurance industry in Pennsylvania make another argument: look-back windows violate the state constitution. “It’s not constitutional to require us, as insurers, to cover risk that we didn’t know we’d have,” Sam Marshall, the CEO of the Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania, told TIME. Church attorney Matt Haverstick says the point should end the discussion: “You just can’t pass a law violating the constitution,” he said.

'We didn't know we'd have' - does that mean you were less than competent? At what point did you begin to realize there was a serious risk? One might suggest when the Boston Globe's Spotlight outed the Catholic Church as having a large number of gays and pedophiles and Bishops who enabled them, that you should have been able to figure out the dramatically increased risk. That was in 2002. Or did you not notice the $25.7m settlement for child sex abuse by the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2003, or the $30.9m payout by the Diocese of Dallas back in 1998?

I'm guessing the church's premiums increased substantially in the intervening years, which, of course, would indicate that you were certainly aware of the risks.

None of the major groups opposing look-back windows has been as active as the Catholic Church. That may be because it is in a uniquely vulnerable position. The recent grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania–along with similar investigations in the state in 2005 and 2011–has revealed that the church keeps extensive, secret archives of all past allegations against clergy members. These documents can be subpoenaed in criminal and civil cases.

Pennsylvania may become something of a bellwether as it considers these questions this month. In 2016, the state house passed a bill with overwhelming support that expanded the statute of limitations for filing new cases until victims turned 50 and created a two-year look-back window. Earlier this year, the state senate responded with a different bill that extended the age at which victims can file civil suits but omitted the look-back window.

Pennsylvania state representative Mark Rozzi, who sponsored the house version, says he won’t support a bill that doesn’t include a look-back window. “This is plain and simple about doing the right thing,” he said. But Rozzi, who has unsuccessfully pushed a version of his bill since 2013, knows well how difficult the political fight will be. “When my bill passed the house last time, they hired 39 lobbyists to lobby 50 senators,” he says of the church. Amy Hill, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, would not comment on its lobbying efforts. “We are devastated and outraged by the revelations of terrible sexual-abuse crimes committed in the Catholic Church,” she wrote in a statement to TIME. “The time to discuss legislation will come later.”

Advocates for victims of child sex abuse say the time is now. Just as 41 states eliminated at least some felonies from their statute-of-limitation laws for criminal allegations after a 2002 Boston Globe investigation revealed widespread church abuse, the current revelations are driving changes in civil cases too. Rozzi, who was raped by a priest when he was 13, says the state is at a tipping point. “People are fed up with the hypocrisy,” he says. “Either you’re protecting your bank account or you’re protecting kids who got abused. It’s not a tough choice.” Finnegan is less upbeat. “It’s all about money. Where are the dollars coming from?” he asks. “The church with all their lobbyists and law firms? Or people like us?”

Maybe Catholic Dioceses going bankrupt is not a bad thing?

Editorial: Kentucky must investigate

Catholic church child sex abuse

The Courier Journal 

Demonstrators gathered outside the Cathedral of the Assumption in downtown Louisville to protest the Catholic Church's handling of child sex abuse. Nikki Boliaux, Courier Journal

It’s not enough to denounce the unspeakable abuse that children have suffered for decades at the hands of Catholic priests.

There must be justice.

That’s why Attorney General Andy Beshear must be given more power to investigate Kentucky's Catholic dioceses, with the state legislature granting permission for a statewide grand jury.

Abuse victims in Kentucky deserve nothing less.

They are demanding that abusive priests be exposed and punished, and they are seeking help from the attorney general’s office — their request coming on the heels of last month’s damning report on sexual abuse in Pennsylvania Catholic churches.

They want the Catholic church to stop calling the heinous abuse of children "inappropriate behavior" and call it what it is — rape and sodomy. 

They rightfully want employees who covered up the abuse to be fired, and they want financial support cut off from convicted priests.

They want more women in prominent roles, and they want victims of clergy sexual abuse appointed to the Archdiocese of Louisville board that reviews abuse allegations.

They want the church to stop requiring victims to sign confidentiality agreements to receive settlements, and they want a complete list of the settlements paid since 1990, including names of abusive priests and settlement amounts.

Simply put, they want this evil exposed and uprooted.

They want the same thing the Catholic church should want.

It's encouraging that Pope Francis has summoned bishops from around the world to the Vatican for an unprecedented conference to deal with child sexual abuse in the church. It's also good that the pope and his top sex-abuse adviser are meeting Thursday with U.S. church leaders, including the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

These horrific abuses have shaken our communities, this nation and the world.

The Courier Journal has written extensively about the crisis in the Archdiocese of Louisville, documenting hundreds of abuse allegations and reporting the gut-wrenching stories of people who said they were fondled, molested and raped as children by priests and other church workers.

In 2003, the archdiocese agreed to pay $25.7 million to settle child sexual-abuse allegations made in 240 lawsuits. It was the second-largest payout in an abuse case for the Roman Catholic Church in the United States at the time. The Diocese of Dallas paid $30.9 million in 1998 to 12 victims.

Clearly a full investigation is warranted here, and a statewide grand jury is needed.

But in Kentucky, the legislature has not granted the attorney general the authority to convene a multi-county grand jury like the one that enabled Pennsylvania to investigate sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

The attorney general's office is drafting legislation to form such a grand jury, and Kentucky lawmakers need to approve it.

Pennsylvania's grand jury found sickening abuse as well as evidence that church leaders protected more than 300 "predator priests" in six Roman Catholic dioceses for decades. 

Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, who is from Pennsylvania and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Allentown, called the report painful.

"We can only be healthy as a church and as a society if we honestly confront and deal with sexual abuse and harassment on all levels," Kurtz said. "In doing so, we must renew and strengthen efforts to reach out to victims, promptly communicate with law enforcement, remove offenders, and foster a safe environment for children, youth, and adults in our church."

The archbishop is right.

But we can't trust the Catholic church to do the right thing. For too long it has failed too many people — especially our youngest and most vulnerable.

We need a grand jury investigation.

In Missouri, Attorney General Josh Hawley launched an investigation last month into potential clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and the church is cooperating. It is opening its files and allowing a thorough review.

The Missouri attorney general's office will report its findings, and based on the evidence, recommend any charges.

The same thing must happen in Louisville, and the archdiocese must cooperate. 

The victims in Kentucky deserve justice.

Pope Francis meets with U.S. bishops as more leaders face allegations of harassment and cover-ups

Pope Francis speaks in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sept. 12, 2018. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)

By Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein, WAPO

Top American bishops met in the Vatican with Pope Francis on Thursday to discuss the sexual-abuse crisis that the leader of the U.S. Catholic Church said has “lacerated” the church.

That leader, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was himself accused this week of covering up the actions of an abusive priest in his archdiocese — prompting questions about DiNardo’s fitness to lead reform efforts.

“It’s too early to say, but just looking at the case, it looks very bad. It seems like a violation — is he the guy who should be leading at this point?” David Gibson, the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at the Catholic university Fordham said of DiNardo. “What he’s got to be seen to be doing is pushing for a very rigorous policy. Can he do that if he himself has not been as diligent, to say the least, as he should be?”

The moral authority of bishops across the United States has come under new scrutiny after one cardinal resigned this summer and another publicly stated he might do so, and a bishop was removed from ministry by Pope Francis on Thursday. That bishop, Michael J. Bransfield of West Virginia, will face a church investigation on charges of sexual harassment.

Amid the crisis facing the church’s leaders, the bishops who met with Francis on Thursday said very little about what they discussed in terms of plans for change. “We shared with Pope Francis our situation in the United States — how the Body of Christ is lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse. He listened very deeply from the heart,” DiNardo said in a statement after leaving the meeting, which also included Archbishop Seán Patrick O’Malley of Boston and Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles.

“It was a lengthy, fruitful and good exchange,” he said. “As we departed the audience, we prayed the Angelus together for God’s mercy and strength as we work to heal the wounds. We look forward to actively continuing our discernment together identifying the most effective next steps.”

On Wednesday, as DiNardo prepared for his meeting with the pope, the Associated Press reported that a woman claims to have told DiNardo about an abusive priest in his Texas archdiocese, and that DiNardo failed to take action to remove the priest from ministry until the priest was arrested on child abuse charges this week.

The accusation only fueled calls for increased lay leadership and for the resignation of bishops nationwide that have echoed through the Catholic Church since a Pennsylvania grand jury completed a massive report last month, detailing allegations of abuse by more than 300 priests in the state. States including Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York have now launched investigations.

Gibson called for a board of lay leaders, not clergy, empowered to investigate whether bishops are properly handling all allegations of abuse. “The pope seems to feel that he can do it on his own here and there. But I don’t think that’s a credible way to go forward,” he said.

However, some in the church say internal investigations are still the proper way to handle the crisis.

Teresa Kettelkamp, who headed the office of youth protection for the American bishops and now sits on a similar commission for Pope Francis, said Francis is pursuing an appropriate course of action of having bishops clean house in their own dioceses. “A lot of good people are working for the good of the cause. And hopefully investigation results will be shared fully with the public, and if action is needed, it will be taken as fast as humanly possible, with no foot-dragging,” she said. “The truth always comes to light.”

Asked if DiNardo could continue to lead the U.S. church on this issue despite being accused of covering for a priest himself, she said she would wait “until I know all the facts.”

DiNardo is accused of mishandling the case of the Rev. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, who was arrested in Conroe, Tex., on Tuesday on four counts of indecency with a child. Police say La Rosa-Lopez fondled two teenagers when he was a priest at a Conroe church. At the time of his arrest, he was a priest at another church in Richmond, Tex., the police report said.

The AP said that both victims, who were teenagers at the time, are now in their 30s. Their names have not been released because they are victims of sexual abuse. One victim told police that her family reported La Rosa-Lopez’s conduct to the church after he touched her when she was a teenager and that the priest was transferred to another parish as a result. In 2010, the victim said she saw that La Rosa-Lopez was still in ministry and met with DiNardo, who had not been in Texas when she first raised the allegation.

The victim told police that DiNardo told her the priest wouldn’t work with children. But eight years later, La Rosa-Lopez was still in a parish church. “I’m tired of all of his empty words,” the victim said of DiNardo, to the AP. “If he’s going to go meet with the pope and pretend that all of this is okay and his diocese is clean, I can’t stand it.”

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston responded in a statement that church officials considered the woman’s allegations when she first reported the priest in 2001, and that an archdiocesan review board decided to allow La Rosa-Lopez to return to parish ministry in 2004 based on the evidence presented to the board.

The only other complaint about La Rosa-Lopez was in 2018, the archdiocese said. That victim reported his abuse to the church about a year ago, according to police, but did not meet with DiNardo until last month. When he did, the church contacted Child Protective Services, and La Rosa-Lopez was arrested this week.

Teresa Pitt-Green, who co-founded the magazine Healing Voices for sexual-abuse survivors trying to maintain their Catholic faith, said she is “heartbroken” about the DiNardo allegations. She has worked with him and found him supportive of clergy abuse survivors. “I’m finding myself feeling confused if it’s true, but I’m not judging anything,” she said.

As far as whether the allegations affect DiNardo’s ability to lead the charge against abuse, Pitt-Green said: “I certainly think it challenges it. And it makes people question.”

That feeling of not knowing who to trust, she said, is especially familiar and hard for survivors who have been violated in a context that’s supposed to be holy and safe. “As a survivor, I’m very leery of what people try to present as real — and even more so now.”

Bishop Michael J. Bransfield sits in his office in

Wheeling, W. Va., in 2005. (Dale Sparks/AP)

On the same morning that DiNardo, facing this accusation, met with Pope Francis, the Vatican announced that Francis would accept the resignation of Bransfield, the 75-year-old leader of the Wheeling-Charleston, W. Va., diocese. Francis ordered the archbishop of Baltimore to investigate charges that Bransfield sexually harassed adults, the Baltimore archdiocese said in a statement; Bransfield previously has been accused of molesting teenagers and denied the accusations, according to church officials and court documents.

Bransfield is only the latest U.S. Catholic leader removed from his position due to sexual harassment and coverup charges. This summer, Theodore E. McCarrick, archbishop of Washington from 2001 until his retirement at age 75 in 2006, became the first U.S. cardinal ever to resign from the College of Cardinals due to allegations of sexual abuse. He has been accused of sexually harassing two minors as well as young adult seminarians and priests.

And after the Pennsylvania grand-jury report last month, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington has faced local and national clamor to resign. The report describes Wuerl’s response to allegations of abuse during his 18 years as bishop of Pittsburgh; he sometimes went to great lengths to remove accused priests from churches, and other times took psychiatrists’ advice that the priests were safe and let them continue in ministry.

On Tuesday, Wuerl told the priests in the Washington archdiocese that he will travel to the Vatican soon to discuss his potential resignation with Francis. He did not say whether he would ask to be relieved of his duties by the pope, but he did say he has heard the cries for a “new beginning.”

In a story published Wednesday, the archdiocesan newspaper appeared to clarify Wuerl’s plans. “The cardinal said he has concluded that the best way to serve the Church as it moves into the future is two-fold: to participate in a process of healing for all those who have suffered abuse, and to meet soon with Pope Francis to request that the Holy Father accept the resignation that was submitted three years ago when the cardinal turned 75,” the story said.

In a blog post Thursday, Wuerl seemed to own up to sometimes erring during his time in Pittsburgh. “The processes were not flawless, and I must acknowledge the profound heartache, anger and distrust that have been expressed in the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report. For my shortcomings of the past and of the present I take full responsibility and wish that I could wipe away all the pain, confusion and disillusionment that people feel, and I wish that I could redo some decisions I have made in my three decades as a bishop and each time get it right,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, for survivors, the airing of so many wrongs is both painful and vindicating. Pitt-Green said that the bishops are suffering a “self-inflicted wound.”

“The pressure they feel from Catholics is nothing compared to the pressure from God to clean this up. There’s no two ways about this,” she said.

Wow! Somebody mentioned God in a story on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. How unique!

Pope Francis calls for major global summit over

child clerical sex abuse crisis

By Tara Isabella Burton, Vox

Pope Francis’s papacy has become increasingly embattled over the child sex abuse crisis. 

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Catholic leaders from around the world will assemble at the Vatican this February for a summit to finally contend with the global crisis of child sex abuse at the hands of clerics. Leaders from each bishops’ conference around the world will convene at the Vatican for an emergency meeting to discuss the Church’s handling of widespread clerical sex abuse of children over the past several decades.

This summit, which is unprecedented in scope and scale, represents the most significant and public-facing effort by the Vatican to address the global clerical sex abuse crisis.

It does, however, also say something about the lack of urgency. Is it really necessary to wait 5 months?

Though knowledge of widespread abuse has been in the news for more than two decades, particularly in the US and Ireland, this year has been a watershed moment for the crisis. Every single bishop in Chile resigned at Francis’s behest over their collective participation in covering up the abuses of Rev. Fernando Karadima in May. That same month, the Australian media reported that the influential Cardinal George Pell would stand trial in Melbourne for charges of decades-old child sex abuse.

The summer saw still more revelations. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, DC, was stripped of his title in disgrace in July after revelations emerged that he had repeatedly sexually harassed junior seminarians under his care, as well as at least two minors.

And then a landmark August grand jury report in Pennsylvania accused at least 300 priests of molesting at least 1,000 minors over the past seven decades. Later that month, a former Vatican official accused Pope Francis of knowingly reversing Vatican sanctions against McCarrick placed by Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, despite knowing of McCarrick’s conduct with adults. Ex-papal nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò has not suggested that anyone in the Vatican, including Francis, knew about McCarrick’s abuse of minors.

Francis has not formally responded to these accusations, although in a recent homily he alluded to the “Great Accuser” — Satan — attempting to stir up distrust among bishops by trying “to uncover the sins, so they are visible in order to scandalize the people,” seeming to suggest that Viganò’s letter might have been diabolically motivated.

This unprecedented meeting also reveals that the Vatican is finally treating the sex abuse crisis as a global, not a localized, crisis. As David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center for Religion and Culture, told Vox last month, Vatican defenders have traditionally treated clerical sex abuse as an “American phenomenon, or an Anglo phenomenon” — something divorced from the Vatican itself. This summit, however, seems to acknowledge that the crisis encompasses more than just the English-speaking world.

Indeed, in the wake of the Pennsylvania report, more and more revelations have emerged worldwide. On Wednesday, a German report accusing 1,670 priests of abusing at least 3,677 was leaked weeks before publication. And in France, a priest, Rev. Pierre Vignon, has garnered a 100,000-strong petition demanding the resignation of a senior cardinal, Philippe Barbarin, who is due to stand trial next year for his own role in covering up pedophile priests;

And let us not forget about Guam, or Mount Cashel in Canada.

The announcement for the summit came the day before Pope Francis is set to meet with several high-ranking American ecclesiastical officials, including Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Boston Archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley, a longtime Francis ally and outspoken advocate for child sex abuse victims.

Both Francis’s meetings and the summit demonstrate that Francis has come a long way when it comes to assessing the severity of the sex abuse crisis. Last December, Francis attracted criticism when he dismissed accusations against one Chilean priest accused of covering up a pedophile as mere “calumny,” a dismissal for which he later apologized. But less than 10 months later, as revelations continue to emerge worldwide, Francis seems to be taking the scale of the crisis much more seriously.

Still, Francis continues to resist calls to comment on how much he knew about McCarrick and when he knew it. Until he answers that question, instead of blaming a “Great Accuser,” it’s unclear how much progress can be made.