By Stephen P. White

Five years ago, Pope Francis convened in Rome a "Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church." The first - and to date, only - summit of its kind brought together almost 200 participants, mostly bishops, including the presidents of 114 episcopal conferences, with the intention of "decisively" confronting the crisis of clerical sexual abuse in the Church.

At the time, the global Church was reeling from a series of major scandals involving clerical sexual abuse and the mishandling of abuse allegations against clerics, including bishops. Foremost among these was the case of Theodore McCarrick. But even before the McCarrick news broke in the summer of 2018, a string of high-profile cases had already put Rome's handling - or mishandling - of abuse in the spotlight.

Five months before the McCarrick news broke in the United States, Pope Francis' apostolic visit to Chile and Peru was overshadowed by an embarrassing controversy over the case of Bishop Juan Barros. Pope Francis had, in 2015, appointed Barros bishop of Osorno in Chile despite objections from Chilean bishops concerned about Barros' failure to properly handle abuse charges against the notorious abuser (and Barros' former mentor) Fr. Fernando Karadima.

Pope Francis denounced Barros' critics to the press as being guilty of calumny, insisted he had never seen any evidence of the charges against Barros. . .and then had to apologize and retract both statements after public pushback from the head of his own Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley. Within a week, the Holy Father had reversed course and dispatched a special investigator to Chile.

Within a few months, the pope had on his desk, not only the resignation of Bishop Barros but of every single bishop in Chile.

Before Barros, there was the case of Bishop Zanchetta. A friend of Pope Francis from his days in Argentina, Zanchetta was one of the first appointments Francis made after being elected pope in 2013. Zanchetta lasted in his diocese a little over two years before allegations - ranging from financial mismanagement to having pornography on his phone to sexual abuse of seminarians - landed him in hot water.

Pope Francis called him to Rome to, it's been said, keep an eye on him, though there are other views.

In June of 2019, Zanchetta was charged by Argentine authorities with sexually abusing seminarians. At the time, Pope Francis told the press that a canonical trial for Zanchetta was imminent. Zanchetta's COVID-delayed criminal trial ended in a conviction in 2022. Still no word on the status of his canonical trial.

Then there is the case of Fr. Marko Rupnik, the renowned mosaicist and former Jesuit, who stands accused of spiritual, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of more than two dozen women over the course of several decades. Rupnik was excommunicated, reinstated, ejected from the Jesuits, and then, implausibly, incardinated into a new diocese where he remains a priest in good standing.

Only after tremendous outcry from victims, did Pope Francis agree to waive the statute of limitations so that Rupnik might face canonical proceedings. Those proceedings are, presumably, ongoing.

The summit of 2019 was followed by several changes - a lifting of the pontifical secret for certain cases, a reconfiguring of the Curia and an adjustment to how abuse cases were handled in Rome, and most significantly, the promulgation of Vos estis lux mundi, which regulates procedures for handling allegations of abuse and neglect by bishops.

Surveying these three cases - Barros, Zanchetta, and Rupnik - raises concerns about what exactly has changed in the five years since Pope Francis' abuse summit. The Barros case predates the 2019 summit, the Zanchetta case overlaps with the summit and its subsequent reforms, and the Rupnik case - though not the alleged abuse - has come to light after the summit. Yet there is little discernible difference in how each of these ...