Philadelphia sex-abuse chair, Ana Maria Catanzaro, has blasted her Cardinal, Justin Rigali and his bishops for their response to the sexual abuse problem in the archdiocese.
Writing in Commonweal, a lay Catholic magazine, Catanzaro wrote the Philadelphia cardinal “failed miserably at being open and transparent.”
“What will it take for bishops to accept that their attitude of superiority and privilege only harms their image and the church’s?” Catanzaro asked.
A grand jury recently criticized the panel and church officials for leaving dozens of problem priests in ministry. However, Catanzaro said the archdiocese prescreened the cases the lay board reviews and so it never saw most of them.
At one point, Cardinal Rigali denied there was a single priest still working in the archdiocese with “an admitted or established accusation of sexual abuse of a minor against them.”
He later suspended about 24 priests.
“She should feel very, very used,” said Nicholas Cafardi, a Duquesne University law professor who once served as counsel to the Pittsburgh archdiocese. “They’re being asked to give credibility to a process that is supposed to involve them but didn’t.”
The archdiocese said its review of abuse complaints against priests continues to evolve. The church has hired a second former city prosecutor, Albert Toczydlowski, to ensure that complaints are thoroughly investigated and sent to the review board in a timely fashion, the archdiocese said.
“The observations of Dr. Catanzaro and other review board members are critical to implementing the best possible methods,” the church said in a statement.
Catanzaro has spent eight years on the review board, which makes recommendations to Rigali on whether priests should remain in ministry. She faulted church officials for focusing on lawsuits and liability concerns instead of ridding the church of pedophiles.
Catanzaro also complained that the panel is told to weigh church, or canon, law on the subject of sexual abuse, not civil law, leading to what she called heated arguments between panel members and three canon lawyers who assist the panel.
“We should expect better from the church and from our bishops. Although concerns about liability can be legitimate, addressing the abuse scandal from a legalistic perspective focused on protecting the archdiocese from liability is simply wrong,” she wrote.
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