POPE VOWS ACTION AGAINST SEX ABUSE
OFFERS 21 PROPOSALS AT SUMMIT TO FIGHT PROBLEM
VATICANCITY: Pope Francis opened a landmark sex abuse prevention summit on Thursday by offering senior Catholic leaders 21 proposals to punish predators and keep children safe, warning that the faithful are demanding concrete action and not just words.
The tone for the high stakes, four-day summit was set at the start, with victims from five continents - Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and North America - telling the bishops of the trauma of their abuse and the additional pain the church’s indifference caused them.
“Listen to the cry of the young, who want justice,” Francis told the gathering of 190 leaders of bishops conferences and religious orders. “The holy people of god are watching and expect not just simple condemnations, but efficient and concrete measures to be established.”
More than 30 years after the scandal first erupted in Ireland and Australia, and 20 years after it hit the US, bishops and Catholic officials in many parts of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia still either deny that clergy sex abuse exists in their regions or play down the problem.
Francis called the summit after he himself botched a wellknown sex abuse cover-up case in Chile last year.
POLISH ACTIVISTS BRING DOWN STATUE OF PRIEST
WARSAW: Three activists overturned a statue of a Polish priest accused of sex abuse in the northern city of Gdansk early on Thursday, local police said.
Video footage that went viral on social media showed the men use a rope to topple the statue of Henryk Jankowski, who died in 2010 and has faced accusations of paedophilia.
Jankowski has faced renewed claims of child abuse since the liberal Gazeta Wyborcza daily published an article late last year reviving previous accusations that first surfaced years ago.