ELLICOTTVILLE – Bishop Richard Malone, head of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, has suspended the Rev. Ronald Mierzwa, pastor of Holy Name of Mary Church, for an allegation of abuse, while Pope Francis said the abuse scandals are causing faithful Catholics to stay away from Mass in droves.
The Diocese did not release any other information regarding the suspension.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis said Tuesday, during the last day of his visit to the Baltic Region, that the abuse and cover up of multitudes of scandals have angered and outraged faithful parishioners and leading them to leave the church. He said the church must change if it wants to retain future generations.
“They are outraged by sexual and economic scandals that do not meet with clear condemnation, by our unpreparedness to really appreciate the lives and sensibilities of the young, and simply by the passive role we assign them,” he told a gathering of Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox young people in the Kaarli Lutheran Church in the capital Tallinn, Estonia. “We ourselves need to be converted,” he said. “We have to realize that in order to stand by your side we need to change many situations that, in the end, put you off.”
Breaking news during the Pope’s visit was that the German bishops conference is releasing a report that found that 3,677 people, a majority of them aged 13 and younger and about a third of them altar boys, were abused by clergy between 1946 and 2014.
