Each week, Relevant Radio^® Rome Correspondent Ashley Noronha joins Morning Air^® to discuss news from Rome and the Holy Father’s general weekly audience. These weekly audiences with the faithful rarely make the news cycle, but this week, major secular news outlets covered the general audience, hoping that Pope Francis would address the abuse crisis and cover-up allegations facing the Church in the United States.

John Harper, host of Morning Air, asked Noronha to describe the general feel in Rome regarding the crisis. “The word that I keep hearing here is ‘earthquake’ and ‘bomb’. In general, at this moment officials of the Vatican, of the Curia, are being very careful to speak off the record. So we’re not hearing a whole lot of new information coming from that direction at the moment,” explained Noronha.

“There’s an environment of uncertainty, in general. There’s also a sense of mistrust by some, so interestingly, because of that many have felt unable to voice their own thoughts without fear of being marginalized in some way. So, some members of the curia are very grateful for the more active involvement of the laity in the media and the hope in general is that journalists and the laity will do exactly what Pope Francis recommended when he was on the plane returning from Ireland. He asked all to use investigative skills to examine the claims in Vigano’s report and since then, we’ve seen examples of journalists speculating on motives or the presence of an agenda, but of course, that’s not what we want. We really want everyone to take his words to heart and truly use investigative skills because we want the truth. So we’re hoping that we’re going to be hearing answers to real questions that get to the truth – What did the pope know? When did he know?

“So while there’s a sense of confusion here, there’s also definitely a sense of hope. People are prayerful, we’re praying for clarity. While there’s a sense of sadness, people are praying for purification in the Church and that the investigation will really cause or allow Curia officials and laity to speak and to find the truth,” said Noronha.

Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

Hear the full podcast here. Tune in to Morning Air on Relevant Radio each day at 6-9am ET / 3-6am PT and listen to the News from Rome podcast with Ashley Noronha, only available on the Relevant Radio app.