The group End Clergy Abuse issued an open letter to the cardinals who are meeting informally this week before the start of the May 7 conclave. SNAP, the main U.S.-based survivor group, also identified cardinals who themselves have problematic records in a new database, highlighting a new level of scrutiny of all possible contenders for the papacy.
The developments come amid real questions about how prominent the abuse scandal is featuring in the discussions about finding a new pope. After two decades of unrelenting revelations about abuse and cover-up that have discredited the Catholic hierarchy, many church leaders would like to think the issue is in the past, the survivors said.
“The sexual abuse crisis is not a matter of the past. It is present. And nowhere is its devastation more visible than in the Global South,” the survivors said in the open letter.
Positions of power with lots of fragile prey will always attract predators. Priests, pastors, teachers, scouts, coaches, sanatoriums, families, youth groups, etc.
It takes a good system of heightened vigilance to keep these safe.
That alludes to said predators arriving on-scene after the target group has already hobbled & offered itself to exploitation of its soft bits to such — thereby ignoring the ineffable truth that this specific predator population’s been cultivating exactly this for centuries.
It was more an explanations as to why predators flock to these institutions. Unless you’re suggesting the Catholic priests in questions are thousand-year-old immortals.