Pope To Meet With Sex Abuse Victims Next Month
Francis also revealed that three bishops are currently under investigation by the Vatican for abuse-related reasons, though it wasn't clear if they were accused of committing abuse itself or of having covered it up. Any meeting the pope may have with victims helps him look good while doing nothing noteworthy," said Barbara Dorris, the outreach director of US-based victim lobby SNAP. He did not address a long-standing church practice of transferring priests involved in sexual abuse cases to other parishes, which has come under fierce criticism and is seen as perpetuating the risk of abuse. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, softened its recent attacks on the media, which the church has accused of mounting a hate campaign against the pope.
Francis said the meeting and a Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives would take place early next month. A statement from the office of Boston Cardinal Sean 'Malley, who is organizing the encounter, said the date and details hadn't been finalized but that the meeting was expected to take place "in the coming months."
Clohessy said the pope has shown himself capable of making real change in other areas such as church governance and finance but hasn't done so in dealing with sex abuse by Catholic clergy. But the pope himself has come under fire for the handling of cases that date to his tenure as archbishop of Munich and as a Vatican cardinal in charge of the office dealing with abuse cases. And the Vatican's offer of new meetings was dismissed by one group of abuse victims as a meaningless symbol. Benedict has already met with abuse victims during trips to the United States and Australia in 2008 and with Canadians at the Vatican the following year.
Francis sought to lower expectations about his planned encounter in the Vatican next month with the Israeli and Palestinian presidents, which he announced during the trip. He stressed that they were coming to pray together, not enter into peace mediation. Francis has bent the Vatican's saint-making rules for a half-dozen people so far in his pontificate, waiving the usual second miracle requirement for example to canonize Pope John XXIII last month. Francis, however, offered no such wiggle room for Pius. He said he would travel to Sri Lanka for two days and the Philippines in January 2015. And he suggested that he might follow in emeritus Pope Benedict XVI's footsteps and retire if he no longer had the strength to do the job.
dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040901753.html Pope Benedict XVI greets the faithful during the weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, April 7, 2010. Lombardi renewed some of that rhetoric on Friday, saying the media have failed to portray the pervasiveness of child sex abuse in modern society and the way the church's experience can be useful to society at large. The meeting with a half-dozen victims will mark the first such encounter for the pope, who has been criticized by victims for not expressing personal solidarity with them when he has reached out to other people who suffer. On this issue we must go forward, forward. Zero tolerance," Francis said, calling abuse of children an "ugly" crime that betrays God.
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