Pope Francis meets Irish clerical sex abuse victims at Vatican

By Patrick Counihan
Irish Central
July 7, 2014

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Pope-Francis-meets-Irish-clerical-sex-abuse-victims-at-Vatican.html

Pope Francis: Victims from Britain and Germany join Irish survivors at papal mass.

Pope Francis has concluded his first meeting with victims of clerical abuse – two of them from Ireland.

Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley was present when the Pontiff met six clerical abuse survivors from Ireland, Britain and Germany in Rome.

Cardinal O’Malley had earlier attended a meeting of the so-called G8 council of cardinals on reforming the governance of the Catholic Church.

The American cardinal and other members of the Child Protection Commission, including Irish survivor Marie Collins, were expected to attend the papal Mass.

The Pope met the victims as a Vatican commission moves to address the problem of clerical sex abuse in developing countries.

The website Al Jazeera reports that six victims from Britain, Germany and Ireland met with Pope Francis early on Monday morning.

The meeting, the first since Pope Francis took office, was held at his private residence near Saint Peter’s Basilica.

The report says the meeting is a gesture aimed at expressing his closeness to the tens of thousands of people abused by priests worldwide.

The pope celebrated mass for his guests amid claims by critics that Pope Francis has been slow to act on clerical abuse.

However, in May he branded the sexual abuse of children by priests a crime and promised ‘zero tolerance.’

He added: “sexual abuse is such an ugly crime ... it is like a satanic mass.”

The meeting on Monday came just 24 hours after a meeting of the commission set up by Francis to advise on the sexual abuse crisis and draw up protocols for the pope to consider.

The commission is expected to call on experts from the Southern Hemisphere and the developing world.

The report adds that Pope Francis strengthened Vatican laws on child abuse last year, broadening the definition on crimes against minors to include pedophilia.

However the legislation only covers clergy and lay people who work in or for the Vatican, not the universal Catholic Church.

Vatican officials revealed this year that 3,420 abuse cases had been handled over the past decade by the Church’s Canon Law prosecutors, with 848 priests defrocked and a further 2,572 ordered to ‘live a life of prayer or penance,’ for example in a monastery.

An Argentine group linked to US lobby Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) has complained that no Argentine survivor had been invited to the meeting.

They said: “This hurts because you know of the many cases that have occurred here and of the long struggles of victims and also you know about the many new cases coming to light only now.”