Trapped

One nightmare for executives is to be trapped by crises not of their own making and that come out of seeming nowhere. For example, like this one. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, head of the Vatican’s family and laity office, once served under a formal cardinal in Washington DC who stands accused of sexual abuse of young men. He says he is angry and would have done something about it had he known. His problem is that critics say he should have known because he lived in the same rectory as now-disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. There isn’t much Farrell can do to convince the public that he didn’t have an inkling of the case. He is going to have to live with the suspicion that he is covering up. There are PR problems for which there is no good answer. This is one.