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	Abuse Survivors Round on Vatican The Press Association February 16, 2010 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jfia0EfXw3mcK41mWrJnjAGdzcjA Survivors of clerical abuse have rounded on Pope Benedict XVI for not acknowledging senior clergy covered up decades of sickening mistreatment. At the end of an unprecedented two-day Vatican summit with Irish Bishops, the Pontiff branded the sexual abuse of children and young people a heinous crime and a grave sin. The Vatican said the Pope also told Bishops the weakening of faith was a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors. Maeve Lewis, of support group One in Four, hit back and said Pope Benedict's response was inadequate. "It is deeply insulting to survivors to suggest that they were abused due to failures of faith, rather than because sex offending priests were moved from parish to parish, and those in authority looked away while further children were sexually abused," said Ms Lewis. The 24 senior clergy were summonsed to Rome over the past mishandling of child abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic church in Ireland in the last year. A statement from the Vatican read: "While realising that the current painful situation will not be resolved quickly, he (the Pope) challenged the Bishops to address the problems of the past with determination and resolve, and to face the present crisis with honesty and courage." Andrew Madden, who in 1995 became the first in Ireland to go public with an abuse lawsuit against the church, said submissions made by survivors had been completely ignored during the summit. "It would appear that self preservation and damage limitation for the Catholic Church is still a higher priority for Pope Benedict and the Bishops than the concerns and wishes of people who had been sexually abused as children by priests in the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin over many decades, and that hardly represents change," said Mr Madden. "I can only conclude that the Catholic Church remains a disgraced, discredited organisation that seems to be entirely incapable of responding in any intelligent, meaningful way to the findings of the Ferns, Ryan and Murphy Reports."
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