Cardinal Seán O’Malley stepped down last month as Archbishop of Boston after more than 20 years in the role.
But, despite turning 80 years old in June, and since handing in his pallium, the cardinal remains president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and a leading voice on the issue of preventing clerical abuse and the pastoral care of victim-survivors, as well as a member of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinal Advisors.
Following the launch last month of the PCPM’s first ever annual report on Church policies and procedures for safeguarding, Cardinal O’Malley sat down with The Pillar at the USCCB assembly in Baltimore to discuss the commission’s work, and his role as president.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Cardinal O’Malley, you’re now retired as Archbishop of Boston but still president of the Pontifical Commission.
Has retirement freed you up to give the PCPM more time, and are you planning to continue in the role?
Well, I have a meeting with the Holy Father next month, so I'll find out what he would like to do. I'm trying to come up with some ideas for replacements, but whatever he wants, [I’ll do].
I certainly want to continue to support the commission.
I think the work that they're doing is very important. And we have, after many struggles, come up with a mission and a game plan that's working, and we're having the ability to build capacity for safeguarding in parts of the world where nothing was being done.
There's always been a lot of resistance to the commission. And I never wanted to be the president. My idea was to have a woman who's the president. And I've always insisted that at least half of the members would be women. [There are] not many commissions in the Vatican where that is the case.
And there's no commission where the members work as hard as our people do, I am really so gratified by the quality of the people, they all have these amazing resumes and have given decades of their lives to promoting safeguarding. But it's been a privilege and it's not been easy. And as I say, there's a lot of people who would like to see the commission fail and disappear but we're still there.
You mention that it was never your intention to be president — you wanted a woman in the role.
And you mention there's still a lot of resistance to the commission’s work. There are a lot of people who would like to see it shut down, not at least in Rome.
Do you think it needs a cardinal, to lend it some internal diplomatic heft?
It might. And that's one thing that we need to talk about. And I think having a bishop as the secretary has been good. Our other secretaries had great struggles and were men who gave so much, and were not repaid in kind.
What has been the most positive change you've observed during your tenure as president?
Is there one thing you can point to concretely and say: ‘This got better’?
Well, now that we're working with the bishops as part of their ad limina visits and you see the interest and they're looking for answers. They want to know what can be done.
And from very early on, we've been involved with what I call the “Montessori for bishops” [Editors note: A first year training program for new episcopal appointees, colloquially called “Baby bishops’ school].
And I would always bring along a victim with me, someone like Marie Collins, and the bishops would come up to me afterwards to say “That was the most important talk we had all week. And it was the only woman that spoke to us.”
And as I tell them, I became bishop 40 years ago and we didn't have any Montessori. Cardinal Hickey gave me my preparation. He said, “you wear the ring on the right hand and you carry the crozier in the left hand,” and then you're launched out there to do it.
But if we would've had the opportunity 40 years ago to hear from a victim and to understand the seriousness and the evil — this terrible scourge — I think our history would've been different.
And so the amount of education that's taking place in the Church is very, very important.
When first we were named, I think a lot of our members saw us, and the people did too, as some kind of an advocacy group, that we're there to criticize the Church, and so of course the resistance kept going through the roof. I didn't know if I was going to need a food taster or something at that point.
But now even in the curia, there's this desire to learn more and to be able to do more and respond in a better way. And so I think it's an opportunity to be a partner rather than the adversary, as some people saw us in the past.
You say ‘even in the curia,’ but the PCPM’s report last month was fairly damning about how the curia functions at an institutional level when dealing with abuse issues and cases, even to this day.
Well, I don't think it's ill will. Certainly a lot of the dicasteries are just overwhelmed by it. Right now you've got [the dicasteries for] Oriental Churches, for religious, for laity, for bishops, for clergy, the DDF, all with different areas of competence, and some struggle.
Like in [the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life], I think they said they were getting 80 or 100 cases a day at one time. They're overwhelmed. So if there's some way that that could be streamlined, and we need more regional tribunals and just a lot more education out there.
So there is a lot of room for growth.
One of the things the report flagged, and you've spoken about it in the past, is the need for ‘addressing the persistent concern regarding the transparency in the Roman curia’ on these issues.
Is the resistance to transparency still institutional, or is it a question of individuals opposed to the entire notion?
Well, I think some of them are convinced that that's the role of the local Churches.
And, in a sense, that would be the ideal. But when the local Churches aren't doing it, what then?
In this country, Vos estis investigations into bishops are not usually acknowledged publicly, as a matter of policy.
And this has been made clear by the apostolic nuncio, that local dioceses cannot talk about those cases because Rome has said not to talk about them.
But then we have Rome saying all of the policies are in place to say dioceses can and should talk about this.
Where does the change need to happen in that chain of command?
Well, I think there needs to be an evaluation of Vos estis and how it's being applied and what are its strengths and its shortcomings.
The PCPM’s report accused the curia of ‘fomenting distrust among the faithful,’ through a lack of transparency.
Those are strong words.
Yes. I don't think that that is deliberate or the intention, but it's the result. And particularly when there have been victims whose cases have been resolved, the priest has been removed, and they weren't even informed. Why?
Well, on the subject of removal, the report also called for a 'streamlined process for the discharge from office’ in abuse cases. It called for ‘a simple pathway for resignation or removal.’
For many people, it seems like there is a two-tier justice system at play: that priests are removed, while bishops, generally speaking, are asked to resign.
One of the things that the commission has always asked for is that there'd be transparency around the removal of a bishop.
And if it's because he is unwell, has terminal cancer, that's one thing. If it's because there's some crime in his history, then it needs to be said.
But in instances where you're dealing with either really culpable negligence or primary participation in some sort of misconduct, is resignation enough or should they be fired?
I think they should be fired. But then the question is whether they should be laicized, too.
I mean, when our bishops’ conference was writing the [Dallas] Charter and everything, I think the bishops were at that point of saying that universally a perpetrator should be laicized, unless they're old and infirm.
There's been a lot of debates since then, with other people saying “Well, if you laicize them, then there's no way to control them and you might be unleashing someone. You can't tell them where they live anymore or in any way monitor their behavior or make sure that they're getting counseling or whatever.”
So those are sort of ongoing debates. But the McCarrick case was a very dramatic one. I mean, it took so long before it was dealt with, but when it was dealt with, I mean it was dealt with, emphatically.
But with the commission, our mission is not so much about individual cases, but trying to create a culture of safeguarding. And of course that, at times, means we're looking at policies and outcomes.
You say the work of the commission isn't to look at individual cases, and of course it's not.
And you said earlier that it's not the aim of the commission to be a sort of external advocacy organization, but it has done both when it's felt the need to — thinking particularly of the Rupnik case, where it weighed in in a very public and arguably a determinative way, so that a process that appeared to have been shelved was resurrected.
Do you think that's a necessary tool in the commission's box that it retains?
Well, our task is to advise the Holy Father. So there are some times when we have to tell the Holy Father, “This isn't working, something's got to be done.” And that's happened a few times now.
We don't usually do that publicly. He was the one that revealed the fact that I had spoken to him when he explained that he was removing the statute of limitations and reopening the [Rupnik] case.
And I'm assured that that case should come up soon and be resolved soon.
Another thing the report called for was the possibility of a papal encyclical on abuse and prevention measures, that those issues need to be given a coherent articulation as part of the magisterial authority of the pope.
But is there a danger that the lack of transparency around how the curia operates in some of these murky cases would damage the credibility of that kind of encyclical if it came out?
Thinking of the case of Alberto Ariel Príncipi in Argentina, you have the sostituto — the papal chief of staff — ordering the return to ministry of a laicized abuser-priest.
And everything that happened after that seems to beg a lot of questions.
Well, there's a lot more work that needs to be done. We have very good people on the commission, and as I say, we see our role as being the Holy Father's advisors, and that’s very important to him.
We know that he's not always getting good advice around this.
