Pope offers ideas to combat clerical sex abuse

Reforms stop short of move to defrock priests found guilty

VATICAN CITY — Facing an erosion of trust in the church and in his papacy, Pope Francis on Thursday opened a landmark summit on clerical sexual abuse, saying Catholics expected “concrete and effective measures” against the scourge.

“Hear the cry of the little ones who plead for justice,” Francis said.

The pontiff’s remarks, issued to the 190 bishops and Catholic leaders who have descended on Rome, set a notably firm tone for the beginning of the fourday meeting — the highest-profile test to date of whether the Roman Catholic Church is equipped to deal with its central crisis.

Outside the area where the bishops gathered, victims of abuse from around the world expressed frustration with the church’s long-standing pattern of protecting the institution, treating victims with skepticism and burying cases with monetary settlements.

Some of the comments made by church leaders seemed to acknowledge that reality.

“We have to recognize this crisis in its full depth: To realize that the damage is not done by outsiders, but that the first enemies are within us, among us bishops and priests, and consecrated persons,” Cardinal Ruben Salazar Gomez, archbishop of Bogotá, Colombia, told the bishops in an official presentation. “We have to recognize that the enemy is within.”

The pope and the Vatican face intense pressure to persuade bishops around the world to confront the issue, even where abuse scandals have not yet surfaced publicly, and where some church leaders are skeptical about the severity of the problem. But church officials have called the meeting one phase in a long process, not a cure-all.

The meeting’s first day involved prayer, emotional appeals and discussions on specifics. Bishops listened to speeches and took notes. Francis delivered 21 “reflection points” — ideas for handling abuse that Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta described as a “road map” for discussion in following days.

“It’s an understatement to say (these ideas) have to be taken seriously,” Scicluna said.

Among those ideas, the pope raised the possibility of establishing rules that incorporate lay experts into abuse investigations. He also suggested creating “specific protocols” for handling accusations against bishops. The pope said that the church should consider having a clear contact for victims who want to report crimes.

Though advocates for church reform said some of the ideas would help, they noted that Francis’ points stopped short of a change to church law that would defrock clerics found guilty of abuse.