Youth Synod at the Vatican overshadowed by clergy sex abuse scandals
The reality is, if the Catholic Church hadn’t had a “summer of hell,” as some called it, over the various clergy sex abuse scandals, very little media attention would be focused on this Synod that began Wednesday in Rome. But now, Catholic pundits say, it is the most significant meeting of Pope Francis’s papacy, as the church faces potentially its biggest crisis perhaps since the Protestant Reformation more than 500 years ago.