On Pope Francis and the all so-human issues around him

On Pope Francis’s in-tray is how to deal with priests who sleep with boys or engage in sex of some kind and get cover from their bishops and archbishops. Sexual clergy is a matter that was clear and present just before and during the conclave.

Pope Francis. That sounds simpler than, say, Pope Sergius IV or even Pope Benedict XVI. It may be the only smooth thing these days about Roman Catholicism, led by the Curia (read bureaucracy) at the Vatican.

Even electing the pope is not that transparent. Elderly men – princes of the church – lock themselves up inside a room of splendour and do their thing – quietly or noisily, we have no idea. Anyone who reveals anything to lesser mortals on the outside gets thrown out of the Roman Catholic Church. Excommunication.

That is the dreaded word. You would think that the leader of 1.2 billion worldly people would be elected in a more open way, as was once the case when the papal “candidate would … be submitted to the people for their general approval or disapproval”.

Europe’s powerful secular entities would complicate things, trying to assert control, which is why the whole election is now done hush-hush behind closed doors. Sounds like those political systems where party or even national leaders are chosen by powerful power brokers behind locked doors in “smoke-filled rooms”.

The desire by the Vatican to keep outside influences at bay raises an eyebrow or two in the present day. The conclave maybe secure, but there are nefarious goings-on inside the church. The Roman Catholic Church, declared Reuters, is “mired in intrigue and scandal”.
On Pope Francis’s in-tray is how to deal with priests who sleep with boys or engage in sex of some kind and get cover from their bishops and archbishops. Sexual clergy is a matter that was clear and present just before and during the conclave.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland resigned and skipped the conclave altogether because of sexual conduct that had “fallen beneath the standards” expected of a man of his calling.

While Cardinal Roger Mahony was in Rome to participate in the conclave, it was announced that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which he once headed, the cardinal himself and a former priest, had agreed to pay close to $10 million to settle four child sex abuse cases. The cardinal is said to have protected his less-than-holy priest.
According to the BBC, “many critics feel the Vatican was – and still is – far too slow, too reluctant and too secretive when it comes to acknowledging and investigating sexual abuse”.

If only the Vatican did away with that celibacy business. It is ruining the lives of boys and priests. If celibacy went, women would probably come in finally. The Catholic clergymen may just start viewing them differently, with more respect. They would develop a more expansive interpretation of the written word and allow women become priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinal electors. “Princes and princesses of the church” sounds okay to my ear.

Questions of accountability will just not leave the big, flowing and resplendent robes of the Roman Catholic Church. Not even Pope Francis’. What did Jorge Mario Bergoglio know and when, do or not do, say or not say in the 1970s during Argentina’s dirty war when he was head of Jesuits in that country?

The New York Times says that “was a dark period for the country and the church, as a junta headed by Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, an ultra-traditionalist Catholic, employed torture and murder in a self-declared crusade against godless communism”. State terrorism murdered some 30,000 Argentines.

The Times added: “After the church had denied for years any involvement with the dictatorship, [Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio] testified in 2010 that he had met secretly with Gen. Jorge Videla, the former head of the military junta, and Adm. Emilio Massera, the commander of the navy, to ask for the release of the priests.

The following year, prosecutors called him to the witness stand to testify on the military junta’s systematic kidnapping of children, a subject he was also accused of knowing about but failing to prevent.”
The Vatican, and thus the Roman Catholic Church, is not a democracy, although that would be a welcome thing. But neither should it be a closed off mysteriously dark space.

It is tough enough that citizens are dealing with often-dodgy governments. Throw in an opaque Vatican perched atop the Roman Catholic universe and life gets trickier for a lot of the world’s citizens. Maybe we are all so human after all. And stuff happens anyway. May Pope Francis succeed in lighting up the universal church he is now running.

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com