Pope Francis asks forgiveness for ‘evil’ of child abuse committed by priests

Pope Francis has made his first public plea for forgiveness for the "evil" committed by priests who molested children, using some of his strongest words yet on the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis.

The Argentine-born pontiff said the church, which last month named a high-level group on the scandal including an abuse victim, had to take an stronger stand on a scandal that had haunted it for more than two decades, and indicated there would be repercussions for perpetrators.

“I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil that some priests – quite a few in number, [although] obviously not compared to the number of all priests – to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children,” he told members of the International Catholic Child Bureau yesterday.

“The church is aware of this . . . personal, moral damage carried out by men of the church, and we will not take one step backward with regards to how we will deal with this problem, and to the sanctions that must be imposed.

“On the contrary, we have to be even stronger. Because you cannot interfere with children,” he said in unscripted comments.

'Sanctions'
Francis did not specify whether "sanctions" would be church-enforced or involve civil justice authorities. In February the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child accused the Vatican of systematically turning a blind eye to decades of abuse and attempting to cover up sex crimes.

The scathing report urged the church to immediately hand over its records on the abuse of tens of thousands of children, and remove anyone suspected of abuse from their post and refer the matter to civil legal authorities. The Vatican called the report unfair.

Francis's words strike a different tone to comments he made in March to an Italian newspaper: "The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution that has moved with transparency and responsibility. No one has done more, and yet the church is the only one that is being attacked," he said. – (Reuters)