At a historic Vatican summit Thursday on child sex abuse in the Catholic church, Pope Francis heard directly from victims who spared no details about their nightmares with pedophile priests.
Among the victims whose sordid story reached the Pope’s ears was an African woman who, in a video, recounted more than a dozen years of abuse by a priest who started raping her when she was 15.
“He gave me everything I wanted when I accepted to have sex; otherwise he would beat me,” she told the bishops. “I got pregnant three times and he made me have an abortion three times, quite simply because he did not want to use condoms or contraceptives.”
The unprecedented assemblage began with the humbled Pope leading the call for concrete action along with condemnation.
“In the face of this scourge of sexual abuse perpetrated by men of the church to the detriment of minors, I thought I would summon you so that all together we may lend an ear and listen to the Holy Spirit and to the cry of the small ones who are asking for justice,” the Pope told church leaders from around the world.
“The holy people of God are looking at us and expect from us not simple condemnations, but concrete and effective measures to put in place. We need to be concrete.”
The meeting drew nearly 200 church leaders from all corners of the globe for four days of dialogue on a scandal that has rocked the foundation of the Catholic church.
The summit was convened by Pope Francis last September and features two speeches by the pontiff, talks to develop new guidelines, small group discussions among bishops and a repentant ceremony involving abuse victims.
“The abuse of minors by ordained ministers has inflicted wounds not only on the victims, but also on their families, the clergy, the church, the wider society, the perpetrators themselves and the bishops,” said Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines. “But it is also true, we humbly and sorrowfully admit, that wounds have been inflicted by us bishops on the victims and in fact the entire body of Christ.”
Catholic leaders at the summit come from almost every part of the globe, with 36 from Africa, 24 from North and South America, 18 from Asia, 32 from Europe and four from Oceania, organizers said.
With News Wire Services
