US group decries as ‘troubling’ pope’s pick to head Vatican office handling sex abuse allegations

FRANCES D’EMILIO

A U.S.-based group that keeps track of how the Catholic hierarchy deals with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy says Pope Francis made a “troubling” choice in appointing an Argentine prelate to a powerful Vatican office that handles such cases.

On Saturday, the Vatican announced that the pontiff had picked Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernández, who is archbishop of La Plata, in the pope’s homeland, to head the Holy See’s watchdog office for doctrinal orthodoxy. That office’s mandate also includes handling of sex abuse allegations lodged against clergy.

BishopAccountability, which is based in Massachusetts, said in a written statement that the prelate in 2019 refused to believe victims who accused a priest in the La Plata archdiocese of sexually abusing boys.

Francis “has made a baffling and troubling choice,’’ the group said in a statement emailed late Saturday in the United States. The statement cited what it said was