The Vatican’s clerical abuse summit was many things at the same time, some of them contradictory. The summit was the sixth major initiative on sexual abuse that Pope Francis has launched in six years, and all of the previous five have been rolled back, in whole or in part. So the evaluation of this summit will depend on the follow-through.
For a pope whose pastoral strategy is “begin processes” rather than prescribe procedures, it is plausible that the 2019 summit will be a spur to genuine change. If so, it will be because of matters spoken in public – in the presence of the Holy Father and the leading bishops of the world, covered in detail by the media – that have not been spoken so clearly before.
