New Italian church head faces demands for abuse inquiry

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has named a bishop in his own image as the new head of the Italian bishops conference. Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s nomination was announced Tuesday during the second day of a meeting of the conference. Zuppi is currently the archbishop of Bologna and has long been affiliated with the Sant’Egidio Community, a Catholic charity particularly close to Francis. The Italian Catholic Church is coming under increasing pressure to confront its legacy of clergy sexual abuse with an independent inquiry. The Italian church is one of the few in western Europe that has not opened its archives to independent researchers to establish the scope of abuse and cover-up in recent decades.