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Pope condemns ‘atrocities’ of US clerical child abuse
VATICAN CITY, Aug 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Pope Francis condemned Monday the
“atrocities” revealed by a far-reaching US report into clerical child sex
abuse in the state of Pennsylvania issued last week.
“In recent days, a report was made public which detailed the experiences
of at least a thousand survivors… the abuse of power and of conscience at
the hands of priests,” the pope said in a letter made public by the Vatican.
“Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past,
nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the
victims,” he said.
“We have realised that these wounds never disappear and that they require
us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this
culture of death,” he added.
A devastating US grand jury report published on Tuesday decried a
systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church.
The grand jury said that more than 1,000 child victims were identifiable,
but that the actual number was “in the thousands”.
The report is thought to be the most comprehensive to date into abuse in
the US church since The Boston Globe first exposed paedophile priests in
Massachusetts in 2002.
Calling for “solidarity” with the victims and a fight against “spiritual
corruption”, Pope Francis said “no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair
the harm done will ever be sufficient”.
“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that
we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely
manner, realising the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many
lives,” he said.
BSS/AFP/RY/1733 hrs