Pope Francis said in his homily Monday that those seeking “scandal” and “division” should be answered only with “silence and prayer” as the Catholic Church grapples with it latest sexual abuse scandals.
“With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family [respond with] silence and prayer,” Francis said to a crowd of believers, according to film from Catholic News Agency. “Say your piece and then keep quiet, because the truth is mild, the truth is silent, the truth is not noisy.”
The pope’s words were in reference to Jesus’s silence in the face of those attempting to drive him from Nazareth for his comments on Isaiah in Luke 4:16-30, according to Vatican News.
{mosads}Francis’s comments come after he declined to confirm or deny allegations from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano that Francis knew for years that former D.C. Archbishop Cardinal McCarrick had been sexually abusing minors.
“I won’t say a word about it,” Francis told reporters regarding Vigano’s accusations, according to the Associated Press.
Vigano claims that he brought the Pope a thick dossier of information about McCarrick’s alleged wrongdoing in 2015 and that Francis did nothing.
“The Pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject,” Vigano wrote in his letter accusing Francis of willfully allowing McCarrick to continue his alleged sexual abuse of minors.
McCarrick was removed from public ministry this summer when church officials ruled that accusations that he had sexual abused a teenager were “credible.”
Vigano also alleged that Pope Benedict XVI imposed “canonical sanctions” on McCarrick in 2009 for his alleged misconduct, which Vigano says Francis knowingly ignored when he took power.
The Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported Monday that some corroborating evidence for Vigano’s claims has emerged.
Two sources told CNA that there were witnesses to a 2008 meeting in which McCarrick was told to move out of the seminary that had been his residence.
Additionally, anonymous sources confirmed to CNA that the 2015 meeting Vigano claims he had with Francis did occur.