Pope apologizes for sexual abuse
He meets victims, pledges to hold clergy accountable.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis met for the first time with victims of clerical sexual abuse Monday and pledged that bishops who covered up such abuse of minors would be held accountable.
Likening the abuse to a “sacrilegious cult” that drove its victims to drug addiction and suicide, Francis told six victims that the church should “weep” and “make reparation” for their suffering.
“Before God and his people, I expressmy sorrow for the sins and grave crimes of clerical sexual abuse committed against you, and I humbly ask forgiveness,” he said during a homily at a Mass that the victims attended at his Vatican residence.
After Mass, Francis held more than three hours of individual meetings with the victims, who came from Britain, Ireland and Germany. The encounters left the pope “very touched,” a Vatican spokesman said.
In his homily, Francis appeared to tackle accusations that, even if the church is now trying to root out abusers, it continues to overlook the senior church officials who shuttled abusers from diocese to diocese to avoid prosecution.
The pope asked forgiveness “for the sins of omission on the part of church leaders who did not respond adequately to reports of abuse made by family members as well asby abuse victims themselves,” according to the text of the homily released by the Vatican.
Bishops “will be held accountable” if they failed in their duty to protect minors, Francis said, adding that abuse had been “camouflaged with a complicity that cannot be explained.”
David Clohessy, the director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said his group is glad the pope promised to hold accountable church officials who conceal abuse. “But he hasn’t done it yet, not in Rome nor in Buenos Aires,” he said. “Saying and doing are different things. The first is easy, the second is hard.”
Francis has been accused of refusing to meet abuse victims in Argentina when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, before his election as pope in 2013.
On Monday, one of the six victims who met with the pope at the Vatican praised him for the time he spent with her.
Marie Kane, 43, told The Irish Times that she found the pope “very, very humble. There was no standing on ceremony. No pomp. I felt very comfortable, relaxed. He seemed genuinely frustrated at what he was hearing.”
But Kane said she asked the pope to prove his commitment to ending coverups by getting rid of Cardinal Sean Brady, Ireland’s most senior church leader, who is accused of obstructing an abuse probe in 1975.