Francis also asked O’Malley to lead the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Leading the commission, O’Malley has advocated for survivors, recently admonishing Vatican dicasteries to stop using the artwork of alleged abuser the Rev. Marko Rupnik and previously calling for Francis’ Synod on Synodality to focus on safeguarding.
FILE – Parishioners kneel as then Providence diocese Bishop Thomas Tobin, right, begins Mass at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Providence, R.I., Friday, Sept. 14, 2018. The Providence diocese and its parishioners have for many years been a part of the conversation around abuse in the church. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)
But Catholic clergy sexual abuse watchdog group Bishop Accountability called O’Malley’s a “legacy of failure” in a statement released on his retirement. The group referenced a list of accused clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston, saying it is missing 91 accused diocesan priests, as well as members of religious orders, priests from other dioceses who served in Boston, information about the alleged abuse of each priest and accurate assignment history of accused priests.
“The first measure of Archbishop Henning’s performance in his new job will be the release of a new list of accused Boston clergy that shows his commitment to accountability and transparency,” the organization wrote.
Bishop Accountability called into question Henning’s previous posts as auxiliary bishop in Rockville Centre, “a deeply corrupt diocese whose bankruptcy has been one of the most expensive and dysfunctional,” and as bishop in Providence, “where his presence did not change in the slightest a policy of secrecy and mistreatment of survivors.”
“Henning must fix O’Malley’s list, if he is to be his own man in Boston, and someone whom survivors and all Catholics can trust,” the organization wrote.
Michael McDonnell, communications director for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told RNS that, with this transition, “We can’t forget the past or present. We especially can never forget victims who have yet to step forward.
“Just because a new bishop takes the cathedra, doesn’t mean any child or adult is safer from harm by those employed by those who minister,” McDonnell wrote.
At the press conference for his new appointment, Henning said he had grown up in the generation that had lived through the abuse crisis and that it had been “painful” for him over the course of his life.
“If I have failed you, if a leader in the church has failed you, I’m so sorry, but God has not failed you. God is still with you,” said Henning, calling it tragic if “my actions or failures” would be the reason “for you to lose your relationship with God.”
Saying that survivors “often have as much to proclaim to us about the Gospel as we would to them,” Henning said survivors deserve “a listening heart.”
Of Boston Catholics who had left the church due to clergy abuse, the archbishop-elect said, “I’ll listen to their pain, their woundedness.”
This article originally appeared here.
