Pope Francis calls for ‘concrete and effective measures’ against the ‘plague’ of clerical sexual abuse as historic Vatican summit gets underway
- Pontiff asks bishops in landmark summit to hear ‘screams of little ones asking for justice’
Pope Francis opened a landmark summit on preventing clerical sexual abuse Thursday, saying Catholics were looking to church leaders not for “simple and predictable condemnations,” but instead for “concrete and effective measures” to deal with the scourge.
“May the Virgin Mary enlighten us to try and heal the great wounds that the scandal of paedophilia has caused in both children and the believers,” Francis said.
He called abuse a “plague” and asked that bishops in attendance “listen to the screams of the little ones asking for justice”.
The pontiff’s brief address kicked off one of the most critical points of his papacy, a gathering of the world’s leading bishops to discuss a problem that the Catholic Church for decades has struggled to curb – and that has now damaged the pope’s own reputation.
Church officials have called the four-day meeting one phase in a long process, not a cure-all. But the pope and the Vatican face intense pressure to push bishops from around the world to take the issue seriously, even in regions where abuse scandals have not yet broken into the public.
