Pope Leo XIV met with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) on Thursday of last week, in what was arguably the most significant meeting of Leo’s pontificate to date and almost certainly the most sensitive.

Leo met with the Commission for a full hour – twice as much time as had been allotted for the meeting in the pope’s busy Thursday schedule – and pushed back a meeting with the Secretariat of State.

The meeting with the PCPM was behind closed doors. No copy or transcript of the pope’s remarks was circulated. The founding president of the PCPM, Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, emeritus of Boston, gave an interview to Vatican News in which he said there has been evolution in the Commission’s work over the years.

“Our main purpose was to be advisors to the Holy Father in the area of safeguarding,” O’Malley said.

“We have also been very much involved in the educational efforts of the Church, particularly with the leadership, to help them to understand safeguarding,” he also said.

The crisis of abuse and coverup in the Church remains a pressing issue, more than two decades since appalling revelations in the archdiocese of Boston erupted into scandal that spread around the world.

Pope Francis created the PCPM in 2014, to great fanfare and high expectations. Francis named O’Malley as the first president. He had a strong reform record in the troubled see he received from Pope John Paul II in 2003, in the wake of the Spotlight scandal that led among other things to the resignation of O’Malley’s predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law.

Almost from the outset, however, the PCPM struggled to gain traction, and quickly came to be viewed as both toothless and dysfunctional within the larger Vatican apparatus. Two founding members resigned in frustration at the lack of progress. For a while between late 2017 and 2018, the Commission existed in a sort of juridical limbo, the mandates of the remaining members having expired without extension, replacement, or renewal.

During his time as head of the PCPM, O’Malley showed himself willing to work with patient diligence and also to speak frankly, even in criticism of Pope Francis and other Vatican officials.

In 2018, O’Malley publicly criticized Pope Francis for insensitive remarks the pope had made regarding three Chilean abuse survivors and victim-advocates. Though the cardinal was head of the PCPM at the time, he levied his criticism in a statement issued through official channels of the Boston archdiocese. Francis appeared to take O’Malley’s criticism to heart. At any rate, Francis shortly thereafter ordered a thorough review and sent his top sex crimes investigator to Chile to conduct it.

In 2023, O’Malley again strongly criticized the Vatican and — at least implicitly — Pope Francis, when it became known that Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the disgraced former archbishop of Bordeaux, would remain a priest and keep his red hat, even after Ricard admitted to molesting a fourteen-year-old girl.

That time, the cardinal issued a stern Call to Action through the PCPM itself, decrying “tragically harmful deficiencies in the norms intended to punish abusers and hold accountable those whose duty is to address wrongdoing.”

The PCPM pegged its appeal to a consistory for the creation of cardinals and the ordinary assembly of the synod of bishops scheduled for October, but the appeal was issued on September 27, 2023, the same day the French news magazine, La Croix, reported the news about Ricard’s fate.

“We are long overdue in fixing the flaws in procedures that leave victims wounded and in the dark both during and after cases have been decided,” The PCPM’s appeal said. The appeal from the Commission promised to continue its work and to “press for necessary changes so that all those affected by these atrocious crimes get access to truth, justice, and reparation.”

“We also pledge to use our role to press other Church officials with responsibility to address these crimes to fulfil their mission effectively,” the PCPM said, “to minimize the risk of further transgressions, and secure a respectful environment for all.”

Addressing that critical area, observers across the spectrum of opinion in the Church agree, must be a top priority for Leo.

Even if the Church has made significant strides in protecting children by mandating and enforcing background checks, removing accused clerics from ministry, and other steps, many victims nevertheless are waiting for justice, and the faithful look to their leaders in the faith for it.

Pope Francis issued promising paper reforms during his reign, but those were at best unevenly implemented. The signature reform of the Francis pontificate, Vos estis lux mundi, was a law supposedly enacted in order to strengthen investigative arms and streamline legal processes.

Several high-profile cases, including a couple that seemed perfect tests for the new law – like that of Bishop Richard Malone and his former diocese of Buffalo, New York  – were not tried under it. Others, like that of Bishop Michael Hoeppner of Crookston, Minnesota, led to investigation under Vos estis but apparently did not end in conviction or even trial.

Transparency – a key to justice and its orderly administration – continues to elude those responsible for ecclesiastical justice.

Several high-profile cases touched Francis personally during his twelve-year pontificate, including the case of Father Marko Rupnik, a disgraced former Jesuit mosaic artist accused of spiritually, psychologically, and sexually abusing dozens of victims, most of them women religious, often as part of his “creative process” in making the very art that now adorns shrines and chapels around the world.

Rupnik is still a priest in good standing, though Francis ordered his case reopened and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has said it is looking for judges to try a case against him. O’Malley strongly criticized the continued use of Rupnik’s art last year by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications, after the head of the Vatican’s department, Paolo Ruffini, strongly defended his office’s use of Rupnik’s work – and ignited a firestorm that raged for weeks in the press and saw calls for Ruffini to resign or be sacked.

“[P]astoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense,” of alleged abusers, “or indicate indifference to the pain and suffering of so many victims of abuse,” O’Malley wrote in a letter addressed to Vatican department heads in the wake of the controversy.

For Leo, the unfinished business of reform in these regards is more than merely tricky. A year ago, the Vatican’s use of Rupnik images by department heads was certainly crass and grossly insensitive to victims and was fairly taken by victims and observers to indicate precisely what O’Malley said: [not so] subtle support for the accused. Now, with Rupnik awaiting trial, any action by Leo could be seen as an attempt to influence the case in perhaps the other direction.

The case highlights the urgency of the need for root-and-branch reform in ecclesiastical justice at the highest levels.

One thing is certain.

The clock is ticking.