The Coming Whitewash

Judging by this Catholic World News story, the final report from the Vatican on the state of female religious in the U.S. will likely be a business-as-usual report. The dissenting sisters who complained to the secular press about the apostolic visitation appear to be getting their way. Archbishop Joseph Tobin, who now oversees the visitation, is sending strong signals of deference to them: “‘I believe a visitation has to have a dialogical aspect, but the way this was structured at the beginning didn’t really favor that,’ Archbishop Tobin told Catholic News Service. ‘Part of the real harm done at the beginning,’ he said, was Cardinal Rodé’s decision that individual communities would not have the opportunity to read the reports that visitors were to submit to the Vatican.”


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