Catholic Church

By Associated Press (Catholic Herald) - Pope Francis’s top adviser on clerical sex abuse has implicitly rebuked the Pontiff over his accusations of slander against Chilean abuse victims, saying that his words were “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse”... Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, said he couldn’t explain why Francis “chose the particular words he used” and that such expressions had the effect of abandoning victims and relegating them to “discredited exile.”

By Fr. George W. Rutler, Crisis Magazine - As it is a nervous business for prelates to court and be courted by civil power, one might question the wisdom of popes addressing the United Nations or parliaments. A pope is not merely another head of state, and the whole history of the economy of Christ and Caesar makes clear that popes are never stronger than when they are weakest in things temporal. Surely a man resolved as Pope Francis is to do what is right for mankind, was ill-served by those who counseled him on what to say in addressing a joint session of Congress.....