Pope: I felt pain and bitterness of victims
Francis says abuse has hurt Irish vocations too
POPE Francis has said he has felt the ‘pain and bitterness’ of Irish clerical abuse and said it has damaged vocations in Ireland.
The Pontiff was speaking as he presided over his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican – his first since his Ireland trip last weekend.
‘In Ireland there is faith,’ he said. ‘There are people of faith. A faith with great roots. But you know what? There are few vocations to the priesthood.
‘How is that possible? It’s because of these problems, the scandals, so many things.’
‘Alongside the joy of my visit to Ireland, I also tasted the pain and bitterness caused by various abuses caused by members of the Church in that country... in the past ecclesial authorities did not know how to respond in an adequate way to these crimes.’
Talking about his time at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, Pope Francis said that he was moved by the ‘testimonies of faith, love, reconciliation and solidarity given by families living in vastly different situations’, but said that the visit was ‘clouded’ by the recognition of abuse.
‘In my address to the authorities, I spoke of the need to support families in their essential role in society while in my meetings in the cathedral and at the great vigil in the Phoenix Park, I stressed the importance of cultivating God’s gift of love and passing on the faith around the family table in the daily dialogue of grandparents, parents and children,’ he said.
‘At Knock shrine, I commended all families to Our Lady and offered a warm greeting to the people of Northern Ireland.
‘Sadly, the joy of my visit was clouded by the recognition of the suffering caused by the abuse of minors and young people by some members of the Church.
He added: ‘I beg forgiveness for these crimes and encouraged the efforts made to ensure they are not repeated.’
During his visit to Ireland, Pope Francis met, in private, victims of clerical, religious and institutional abuse.
The final day of his Irish trip was overshadowed by release of a document from a retired Holy See diplomat accusing Vatican authorities, including Francis, of covering up for ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick – despite knowing for years that he regularly slept with religious scholars.
The author of the document – the retired conservative Vatican ambassador to the US, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, said Francis should resign for his complicity in the McCarrick scandal, which has implicated US and Vatican church leaders over two decades. US bishops
‘It’s because of these problems’
have called for an independent investigation to find out who knew about McCarrick’s abuse and when, and how he was able to rise through the ranks even though it was an open secret that he regularly invited seminarians to his New Jersey beach house and into his bed.
Francis last month removed Theodore McCarrick as a cardinal and ordered him to live a lifetime of penance and prayer after a US church investigation determined that an allegation he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. Archbishop Vigano’s 11-page letter alleges that Pope Francis knew of excardinal McCarrick’s attitude to seminarians starting in 2013, but rehabilitated him from sanctions that Pope Benedict XVI had allegedly imposed on him in 2009 or 2010.
There are allegations that the Vatican, under Pope Benedict and John Paul II also covered up the information, and that any reported sanctions Benedict imposed were never enforced.
McCarrick travelled widely for the Church during those years, including to Rome to meet Benedict and celebrating Mass with other US bishops at the tomb of St Peter.
Life of penance and prayer