Pope Francis promised 'decisive action' on sexual abuse, but critics say his legacy is complicated

Australia Broadcast Center

22-04-2025

When Pope Francis took on the challenge of leading the Catholic Church into a new era in 2013, he said that cleaning up a global sexual abuse crisis was high on the agenda.
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In many cases, the victims were children.
The worldwide scandal led to a flurry of criminal cases, civil trials and national inquiries, bringing the institution to its knees, amid claims that offenders were moved from parish to parish to
Under serious pressure from survivors, prosecutors and the faithful, Pope Francis told his staff to take "decisive action" and ensure perpetrators were punished.
In a statement from April 2013, the Holy See press office said Pope Francis told the Vatican watchdog that dealt with sexual abuse cases to bring in measures to "protect minors," to "help those who have suffered" and carry out "necessary procedures against those who are guilty".
It was the Argentine Pope's first public statement on clerical sex abuse.
In the 12 years that followed, he attempted to reform the church's public image and private attitudes towards abuse and a culture of cover-ups.
While some credit him with bringing in unprecedented transparency and accountability, others question whether the pontiff could have done more to shine a light on crimes committed by those he knew.
An apology to survivors
From Portugal to Belgium, Canada and Chile, Pope Francis met with survivors of abuse to hear their stories and apologise for decades of harm.
His first meeting was with six survivors from Ireland, Germany and Britain in July 2014 — 16 months after he was elected.
He invited them to visit the Vatican and begged forgiveness for "grave crimes" that were "camouflaged with a complicity that cannot be explained".
"What causes me distress and pain is the fact that some priests and bishops, by sexually abusing minors, violated their innocence and their own priestly vocation," he said.
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It is something more than despicable actions, it is like a sacrilegious cult.
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When a report into sexual abuse in France revealed an estimated 330,000 children had been victim to about 3,000 paedophile priests over 70 years, Francis again apologised on behalf of the church.
"I would like to express my sadness, my pain for the trauma that they have endured; and also, my shame for that for so long the Church has been incapable to put this at the centre of its concerns," he said during a General Audience at the Vatican.
Francis became adept at offering his apologies during his papacy, but Christopher White, the Vatican correspondent for the US-based National Catholic Reporter, said his words didn't always translate into action.
Some survivors say they did not feel that Pope Francis did enough to address systemic abuse within the Church.
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"Victims still regularly complain that there is little transparency on their cases once complaints are filed with the Vatican and an investigation begins," White said.
"Often survivors wait months and years to hear back on the status of their cases and receive very little communication from Vatican departments about what is happening."
Pope Francis promised 'concrete measures'
In his first year as pope, Francis broadened the definition of child abuse in Vatican City and made it punishable by up to 12 years in prison.
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Pope Francis
The leader of the Catholic Church Pope Francis has died. The Argentinian Jesuit oversaw one of the most tumultuous periods in the Church's modern history.
He also set up a panel of experts to advise him on how best to tackle the insidious problem.
But it wasn't until February 2019, that he called a four-day summit to address the crisis and establish what he called "concrete measures" to tackle it, beyond mere "condemnation".
The Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church was unprecedented and involved almost 200 global Catholic leaders.
"The idea was to get them on the same page and to say firstly, abuse is rampant throughout the church and it's not just a problem in the Western world and two, to outline clear protocols for reporting abuse, and critically, its cover-up," White said.
Pope Francis set out 21 "reflection points" for attendees, which included recommendations for handling cases of alleged abuse, and a practical handbook to be given to dioceses outlining steps they must take.
Later that same year, he abolished the rule of "pontifical secrecy" in cases of clergy abuse, so it could no longer serve as a loophole to protect paedophiles, silence victims and prevent police investigations.
In June 2021, the Vatican announced sweeping changes to laws pertaining to clergy sexual abuse cases, bringing about the most extensive revision of the Code of Canon Law in four decades.
"This resulted in the strongest new laws to date to hold priests and bishops accountable — but talking to almost any survivor of abuse one will quickly see that regardless of the clear rules on paper, there's a steep learning curve in enacting these reforms," White said.
Vatican correspondent for Catholic news publication Crux, Elise Ann Allen says Pope Francis took the issue of clergy sexual abuse "very seriously" and did more than any pontiff before him to reform the church.
"He issued new norms and they now enforce mandatory reporting … they target bishops who are negligent in abuse cases, who cover up, so it's not just the abuse but the cover-up," Allen said.
"He tried to go after abusers and he defrocked people, so he did take it seriously."
But Allen says there are several big cases that Francis got wrong.
Francis accused of siding with some abusers
One such case is that of Chilean bishop, Juan Barros.
On a visit to Chile in 2018, Francis publicly defended the bishop, who was accused of being present when another priest molested young boys, but failed to report it.
Juan Barros was accused of witnessing an instance of child sexual abuse and doing nothing about it.
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Francis told Chilean reporters the accusation amounted to "slander",
"The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, then I will speak. There is not a single piece of proof against him. Everything is slander, is this clear?" the pontiff said.
After staunch public backlash, including from cardinals within his own ranks, the pontiff sent the Vatican's top expert on sexual abuse to Chile to investigate the allegations.
Hundreds of Chileans took to the streets to protest against Bishop Barros in 2015.
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Four months later, Francis accepted Barros' resignation and,
Pope Francis' biographer Austen Ivereigh says it's an incident the pontiff would have looked back on with regret.
"He simply realised he had been duped," Ivereigh said.
"The information he had been given was wrong, when he realised there was corruption and he acted and he said sorry in a very deep way, but also acted very, very swiftly to deal with the problem."
Crux Vatican correspondent Elise Ann Allen says this wasn't the only time Francis was accused of siding with perpetrators.
"A fellow Argentine bishop whom he had been friends with, Gustavo Zanchetta, had been accused of sexual misconduct with seminarians, and the Pope had sided with him and then got very quiet about things as the civil trial went forward, and eventually that bishop was jailed," Allen said.
Allen said "big questions remain" about the case of the Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik, who is accused of abusing over 40 adult women, most of whom were nuns.
"He was a fellow member of the Jesuit order, like Pope Francis, and as we came to find out there had been a lot of missteps behind closed doors," she said.
"The big question was, what did Francis know? How involved was he?…What influence did he perhaps have, or what pressures were there, because they were both Jesuits?
"Those are questions that were never answered and so those are questions that are going to be attached to him and that will go down in history as things that maybe he made big mistakes on and could have done better."
The women said they were subjected to sexual, psychological or spiritual abuse at the hands of Rupnik.
While Rupnik has never publicly commented on the allegations,
His 'complicated relationship' with Pell
Pope Francis imparted the final blessing for Australian Cardinal George Pell during his funeral service at St Peter's Basilica in 2023.
Francis had appointed Pell to his council of cardinals shortly after he was elected, and then to the newly created role of Secretariat for the Economy, giving him authority over all economic and administrative activity within the Holy See.
It was the most senior post an Australian Catholic cleric had ever held.
Pope Francis had a complicated relationship with George Pell, experts say.
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In 2019, Pell was imprisoned in Melbourne on child sexual abuse charges, though he was acquitted of 13 months later.
While he was under investigation by police, Francis allowed Pell to continue residing in the Vatican, and he returned to Rome after his convictions were quashed.
"Francis had a complicated relationship with George Pell," White said.
"He appreciated his business acumen and he also never believed Pell was guilty of the crimes of which he was accused and eventually exonerated.
"But the two men couldn't be more different in terms of how they viewed the church. Pell believed the church should position itself against the world as a safeguard of tradition … Francis' disposition is one of openness and dialogue toward the modern world."
Australian victims of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church travelled to Rome to watch Pell testify as part of a sexual abuse inquiry in 2016 and had requested an audience with Pope Francis while they were there.
Their request wasn't granted, and at the time the Vatican said that decision was made because the Australian delegation hadn't used the proper channels.
Pope Francis died just hours after attending the Palm Sunday Mass in Saint Peter's Square.
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On the day Pope Francis died, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said the tragedy of his papacy was "a preventable catastrophe for the children and vulnerable people who were abused during his tenure".
"The next pope must do what Francis refused: enact a universal zero tolerance law for abuse and cover-up,"
"Because of his history of covering up abuse in Argentina, Francis never possessed the necessary credibility to overhaul the Vatican's management of sexual abuse cases.
"The next pope must not have any history of having covered up sexual abuse."