Pope Francis on Monday asked forgiveness for child abuse crimes
and cover-ups within the Catholic Church, admitting that the pain of victims
“was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced.”
The strongly worded statement came ahead of an August 25-26
papal pilgrimage to Ireland, one of the countries rocked by clergy sex abuse
scandals, and followed an expose of paedophile priests in the U.S..
“The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to
heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced,” Francis said in a Letter to
the People of God, a rarely-issued address to the world’s 1.3 billion
Catholics.
On August 17, a Pennsylvania grand jury report, based on hidden
archives of the US Church, named 301 priests from the state as credibly accused
child sex abusers and accused church leaders of a systematic cover-up of their
crimes.
The report “detailed the experiences of at least a thousand
survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the
hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years,” Francis
acknowledged.
“It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge
and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated
persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the
mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable,” he said.
mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable,” he said.
“Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of
others,” he added.
In the run-up to Francis’ visit to Ireland, the head of the
Irish Catholic Church, Archbishop Eamon Martin, said he expected the pope to
meet with victims of clergy sex abuse and to promise effective remedies.
“I’m not sure what his words will be and I’m not sure that a
simple apology is what survivors of abuse want,” Martin said in a BBC
interview.
“If he expresses an apology, it needs to be more than ‘we’re
sorry,’” he added.
In his letter, Francis repeated a famous 2005 quote by his
predecessor Benedict XVI, who, a month before being elected pope, lamented “how
much filth” there was in the Catholic Church.
“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, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so
many lives.
“We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them,”
Francis said.
“Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek
to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future,
no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations
from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up
and perpetuated,” he added.
Like his predecessor, Francis has promised “zero tolerance” on
child abuse, but scandals have kept recurring in several parts of the world – including
in Australia recently.
In January, the pope was accused of insensitivity and
tone-deafness after insisting, during a visit to Chile, that local abuse
survivors had no “proof” against a bishop who allegedly witnessed abuse and
failed to report it.
Following an outcry, Francis apologized for his remarks, held
private meetings with victims at the Vatican, and, after envoys he sent to
Chile backed up victims’ claims, the entire leadership of the Chilean Catholic
church tendered their resignations.
According to church expert John L. Allen, an editor at
specialized website Crux.com, the Catholic Church has a structural problem when
it comes to dealing with cover up accusations.
“Sixteen
years since the crisis first erupted in the U.S., almost ten years since that
happened in Ireland, and now more than five years since Francis was elected,
the Catholic Church still has no credible, transparent process for handling
cases when the accusation against a bishop isn’t the direct commission of abuse
but rather covering up someone else’s crimes,” Allen said in a Sunday column.
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