Amid the biggest sex abuse scandal of his five-year papacy, support for Pope Francis has declined sharply among U.S. Catholics, according to a new survey.
Just 3 out of 10 American Catholics say the pope has done an "excellent" or "good" job handling the church's sex abuse crisis.
While 7 out of 10 Catholics still give the pope an overall favorable rating, 6 out of 10 surveyed by the Pew Research Center say he's doing an "only fair" or "poor" job regarding the sex abuse issue. The negative ratings have doubled since Pew's last survey about the pope in January.
The survey results are based on interviews of 1,754 American adults, including 336 Catholics between Sept. 18 and 24. Among the general population, about half said they had an overall favorable view of Pope Francis. That is the lowest rating he has received since 2013, when he became the pope.
The poll from Pew, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based research center that regularly tracks religious trends as well as politics, is its first about the pope since calls for his resignation began in August after allegations from a Vatican official that he covered up for a disgraced cardinal accused of sexually abusing minors and adult seminarians.
Those allegations came in the form of an 11-page public letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., who claimed that Francis and several American cardinals and archbishops protected Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for years while knowing of his sexual misconduct. McCarrick, the former Archbishop of Washington, D.C., who was among the most powerful figures in the U.S. church, resigned in July after it was reported that he sexually abused children, teens and seminarians over several appointments in his decades-long leadership in the U.S. church.
Vigano blamed church leaders for protecting a widespread "homosexual current" in the Vatican and said Francis should resign. He also criticized church leaders for having a "pro-gay ideology."
The scandal, coupled with continued sex abuse revelations elsewhere in the church, prompted Francis to call for a global meeting of bishops in February to discuss the sex abuse crisis.
