Oprah for Pope!

Oprah models transparency, responsibility in her handling of the crisis at her school.

It must have seemed like a bad dream. For beloved talk show host Oprah Winfrey, starting a school for girls in poverty-stricken South Africa was her greatest achievement, a dream come true. But the dream morphed into a nightmare when she received the word that students had been sexually abused by a dorm matron at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.
For Oprah, herself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the news was devastating. But she made no attempt to hide the abuse nor her emotional reaction to the news: she tells of her response in the January issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

"Many years ago, Betty Rollin wrote a book about breast cancer called First, You Cry," Oprah wrote. "That rule must apply to other crises, too, because that's exactly what I did, pacing from room to room in heaving sobs. It felt like my heart was splitting."

Maybe that's the difference. Maybe that's why Oprah's handling of the sexual abuse crisis at her girls' school was so many light years away from the reactions of the Catholic hierarchy to the abuse of the children they were responsible for. Somehow I have a hard time picturing any of the prelates giving themselves over to grief the way Oprah did, the way any feeling person would. Oprah allowed herself to experience what the Bible refers to as "genuine sorrow that leads to repentance (change)." So instead of trying to cover it up, buy the victims off, blame them and then say, well, that's all over, time to move on, folks, Oprah allowed herself to feel her own disappointment, as well as entering into the pain of the victims, a pain she is intimately acquainted with.

But Oprah didn't stop there. First she cried, then she acted. She called in some of the country's best experts in child trauma and developed an action plan, then took off for South Africa. She headed an investigation into the charges, provided a psychological team to offer support for the girls, and is developing a new educational team.

Oh, I'm sure she has a legal team assembled, as well. You don't get to where Oprah has gotten without protecting your assets, and no doubt she had that base covered, too. But the Catholic Church could take a page from Oprah's script: it may have happened somewhere, sometime, but I have never heard of the Catholic Church bringing in trauma experts of their own volition, certainly not prior to their public humiliation in 2002. I have never heard of the Catholic Church hierarchy personally calling victims and their families to extend their concern. I have certainly never heard of any cardinals or bishops or popes entering into the suffering of their many, many victims the way Oprah did.

That's why, the next time the cardinals gather to choose a new leader, I say, think outside the box. Stedman may not go for it, but I think it's a great idea, one who's time had come: Oprah for Pope!