'GOD FORGIVE US'
Francis atones for sex-abuse scandal
Pope Francis on Sunday begged forgiveness for the sexabuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church a day after a former Vatican official accused him of covering up allegations against a US cardinal.
Speaking at the Marian Shrine in the Irish town of Knock, the pontiff said the “open wound” of the sex scandal required the church to be “firm and decisive in the pursuit of truth and justice.
“I beg forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God’s family,” he told the tens of thousands gathered.
“None of us can fail to be moved by the stories of young people who suffered abuse, were robbed of their innocence and left scarred,” the pontiff said.
Later, in a live-streamed Mass from Dublin’s Phoenix Park, the pope asked forgiveness for the “abuses in Ireland, abuses of power, conscience and sexual abuses” perpetrated by church leaders.
The remarks came the day after Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Vatican ambassador to the United States, accused the Argentinian pope of personally covering up the alleged abuses of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the onetime archbishop of Washington, DC.
In a lengthy letter published Saturday in the National Catholic Register, Vigano claimed that he told Francis in 2013 about allegations that McCarrick had molested young seminarians — but the pope nevertheless chose to lift the sanctions imposed on McCarrick by his predecessor, Pope Benedict.
Vigano, whose letter also rails against gays and liberals in the church, doesn’t provide any evidence of the sanctions existing in the first place.
McCarrick resigned last month after a US church probe found accusations that he’d sexually as- saulted a minor were “credible.”
Neither Francis not the Vatican have commented on Vigano’s claims.
As Francis held the Dublin Mass, thousands of protesters holding banners reading “The Church Protects Pedarasts” gathered about 2 miles away.
“Our gathering is for everyone who wishes to stand in solidarity with those harmed by the actions of the institutional Roman Catholic Church,” organizer Colm O’Gorman tweeted.
Meanwhile, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, Father Conor Cunningham — a priest from Ireland who was filling in for Timothy Cardinal Dolan — also mentioned the victims during his homily.
“For all victims of sexual abuse and harassment, we pray to the Lord,” he said.