The old issue of pedophile priests has come back to haunt the Catholic Church, as a series of fresh sexual abuse scandals threatens to shake the long-standing religious institution to its core.
The Church took the first big hit in early March, when a report revealed that the head of the Irish Catholic Church had been present at meetings in 1975 where children had signed vows of silence regarding their experiences with pedophile priests. Thereafter, allegations of child sexual abuse echoed across Europe in the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and even in Germany, where Pope Benedict XVI's brother was accused of being involved in some of the scandals and the pontiff himself was personally linked to the mishandling of the cases. The latest in this string of scandals surfaced less than two weeks ago in the US, when The New York Timesreported the failure of the Vatican to defrock a priest who had molested some 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin.
What shocked the world, and the Catholic community in particular, has not only been the nature of these revelations but the Vatican's haphazard and ill-advised response. The Vatican's tone-deaf reactions include declarationsemphasizing that pedophilia is not a problem limited to the Catholic Church but one that affects society at large,protests against the international media for waging what the Vatican considers a smear campaign, an (unsuccessful) letter of the Pope to the Catholics of Ireland on sexual abuse (which, failing to punish Church leaders for past mistakes and lacking a mea culpa on the part of the Pope, simply added insult to injury), the launch of six Twitter channels where old Vatican declarations on sex abuse were tweeted, and the inappropriate comparison by Benedict's personal Preacher of the accusations levied against the Catholic Church to the "collective violence suffered by the Jews."
(Backpedaling, the Vatican had to do damage control by stating that those words did not represent the Church's official stance.)
What speaks loudest, however, is the Pope's silence on the issue. And when the world was expecting the head of the church to finally address the scandals during the Sunday Easter mass, it was instead subjected to Cardinal Sodano'spraise of the Pope for rising above "petty gossip."
Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has shown impressive resiliency, and it is unlikely that the turmoil that is currently rocking the institution will bring about its demise. But it is also true that the competition the church faces for soul-share (a fact that led the 82-year old media-wary Pope to urge priests earlier this year reach out to the people by blogging) and the Vatican's blemished record, especially in light of the ongoing sex abuse scandals, will certainly prevent potential converts from joining the Church's ranks and might even alienate current members.
At this point, whatever the Church does to address the pedophilia allegations will almost certainly be too little too late. But if Benedict XVI wishes to defend his credibility and that of the institution he represents, he would do well to speak out, punish those involved in abuse cases and put measures in place to prevent this type of misconduct on the part of the clergy.
As for the future, he might consider hiring a public diplomacy team.
Mariana González Insua is a first year student in USC's Masters of Public Diplomacy program. She is originally from Argentina and recently completed a Masters in Latin American Studies at Stanford University.
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