Remarks published in an Italian newspaper on Sunday seemed to indicate that Pope Francis suggested 2% of the total Catholic clergy–or about 8,000 priests–were pedophiles.
Eugenio Scalfari, journalist for La Repubblica, penned the story. He conducts regular interviews with Pope Francis.
But, as the Los Angeles Times reports, Scalfari does not record his conversations with the Pope, nor does he take notes during them. Instead, he transcribes the conversations from memory.
This led to a jibe from Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, who noted the absence of a quotation mark at the end of the paragraph in which the Pope is alleged to have made his comments about the 2%.
Said Lombardi: “[Is that] a lapse of memory or an explicit acknowledgment the naif reader is being manipulated?”
Metatextual winks aside, the comments already rank among the most controversial Francis has made regarding the church’s ongoing sex abuse scandal.
David Clohessy, the executive director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said that Francis’ estimate was too low, and called on the church to take the abuse scandal seriously:
I would challenge fans of this pope to name a single step he’s taken that has had a practical impact on the crisis…He’s made significant, dramatic, quick effective steps to transform church governance and finances. He obviously has both massive power and the willingness to use it, but not on this crisis.
Over the last decade, the Vatican has defrocked 848 priests because of abuses related to pedophilia.
You can read La Repubblica’s interview online, albeit in the original Italian.
