VATICAN CITY (AP) — The pope fired a 52-year-old Slovak
bishop on Monday for apparently mismanaging his diocese in a rare show of papal
power over his bishops.
Usually when bishops run into trouble — either for alleged
moral lapses or management problems — they are persuaded by the Vatican to
resign. But Pope Benedict XVI has become increasingly willing to forcibly
remove bishops who refuse to step down, sacking three others in the last year
alone.
His willingness to do so raises questions about whether he
would take the same measures against bishops who covered up for sexually
abusive priests. So far he has not.
On Monday, the Vatican said Benedict had "relieved from
pastoral care" Bishop Robert Bezak of Trnava, Slovakia. No reason was
given, but Italian news reports suggested administrative problems were to blame
and Slovak news reports quoted Bezak as saying he thought his criticism of his
predecessor may have had a role.
Bishops normally hand in their resignation when they turn 75
years old, their customary retirement age.
The exercise of the pope's ability to fire a bishop has
important implications, particularly concerning bishops who mishandle pedophile
priests.
In the face of U.S. lawsuits seeking to hold the pope
ultimately responsible for abusive priests, the Holy See has argued that
bishops are largely masters of their dioceses and that the pope doesn't really
control them. The Vatican has thus sought to limit its own liability, arguing
that the pope doesn't exercise sufficient control over the bishops to be held
responsible for their bungled response to priests who rape children.
The ability of the pope to actively fire bishops, and not
just passively accept their resignations, would seem to undercut the Vatican's
argument of a hands-off pope.
Jeffrey Anderson, who is seeking to hold the Holy See liable
for a case of an abusive priest in Oregon, said the Vatican was trying to have
it both ways.
"They will remove, using their canon laws and their own
protocols, bishops, priests and clerics for any reasons — for theological or
any other reasons — but when it comes to sexual misconduct, they never use those
same standards," he said.
Even the most well-known case, that of Cardinal Bernard Law,
ended when Law offered his resignation after the sex abuse scandal exploded in
his Boston archdiocese 2002. Law subsequently was named archpriest of one of
the Vatican's basilicas in Rome, St. Mary Major.
That said, things may be changing: The Vatican's sex crimes
prosecutor, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, warned in February that bishops could
face possible church sanctions for malicious or fraudulent negligence unless they
follow the Vatican's rules on handling sexually abusive priests. But he
acknowledged that such bishop accountability needed to be "further
developed."
No comments:
Post a Comment