(Rorate Caeli) Last April 5th the press reported the news that Pope Francis had reaffirmed Benedict XVI’s stance of zero tolerance against pedophilia. The subject was brought up by the Pontiff during an audience with Monsignor Gerard Ludwig Muller, Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. The Pope especially asked for the utmost firmness in measures to protect minors, help for victims, procedures against the guilty and a commitment by the Episcopal Conferences to formulate and actuate the directives in this matter of such importance to the credibility of the Church.
In his Letter to the Catholics of Ireland of March 19th 2010, and in many other declarations, Benedict XVI had already expressed [the necessity] of a line of extreme rigour against abuses by clerics, emphasizing the urgency of moral reform in the Church. This position, as was expected, stirred up an immediate consensus on the part of public opinion and the mass-media. For the laws and common sentiment of the greater part of western countries, pedophilia is considered, as is rape, an appalling crime, not however, because of the act itself, but for the violation that these crimes comport regarding rights, in the one case of children and in the other of women. Homosexuality, by contrast, is considered a right that even children should be educated to respect, in the name of the absolute liberty that they would be able to have in choosing their own sexual “orientation.”
