PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsweek
Updated | PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Pope Francis met on Sunday with five adults who were abused by Catholic clergy when they were children and vowed to hold responsible all involved in the crime or cover-ups.
While the pope has met with victims of sexual abuse in Rome, this was his first meeting with them on a foreign tour. Philadelphia has been the most publicly scarred in the U.S. Church abuse scandal out of any of the cities visited by Francis, who ends his six-day U.S. tour later in the day.
“I have in my heart these stories of suffering of those youth that were sexually abused,” Francis told bishops.
“The people who had the responsibility to take care of these tender ones violated that trust and caused them great pain. God weeps for the sexual abuse of children.”
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said that at the morning meeting in Philadelphia’s seminary the pope “expressed participation in their suffering and pain and shame.”
“He renewed the Church’s commitment to listen to victims and treat them with justice, to punish the guilty and that crimes of abuse would be fought with an effective program of prevention in the Church and in society,” the spokesman said.
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