Pope tries to bolster church solidarity

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis asked Saturday for daily prayers to protect the Catholic Church from what he says are “attacks by the devil,” in his latest response to the clerical sex abuse and cover-up scandal roiling his papacy.

A Vatican statement appeared to be an indirect response to accusations that Francis himself, and a string of Vatican officials before him, were complicit in covering up the sexual misconduct of a now-disgraced American excardinal.

The Vatican said Francis had asked for Catholics worldwide to unite and pray the Rosary each day during October “to protect the church from the devil, who is always looking to divide us from God and from one another.”

At the same time, Francis asked for prayers so the church becomes ever more aware of its “guilt, errors and abuses committed in the present and the past and is committed to combat it without fail to prevent evil from prevailing.”

Francis identified the devil as the “Great Accuser, who roams the earth looking for ways to accuse.”

The Vatican wouldn’t say if Francis was referring to its former ambassador, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who has thrown the papacy into turmoil by accusing Francis of rehabilitating ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI over reports he slept with seminarians.

Vigano accused more than two dozen current and former Vatican officials, as well as a host of U.S. bishops and papal advisers, of being part of the cover-up and called for Francis to resign over the scandal.

Francis has said he won’t respond to Vigano’s claims. But since Vigano’s 11-page accusation was published Aug. 27, Francis has referred repeatedly to the “Great Accuser” who attacks the church and seeks to sow division within it.

Francis removed McCarrick as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined an allegation he fondled a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. Vigano’s claims have led to a crisis in confidence in both the U.S. and the Vatican hierarchy.

Nicole Winfield is an Associated Press writer.