FRANCE
Washington Post
By Associated Press November 7
LOURDES, France — France’s Roman Catholic Church is trying to make amends for years of silence surrounding pedophilia among priests with a day of prayer and fasting for victims of sex abuse — and to fix the problem, notably with a prevention program for priests.
Bishops who gathered in the town of Lourdes, a leading pilgrimage site, for their biannual plenary assembly prayed on Monday “for forgiveness for the sins committed by clergy members.”
During a Mass at the Rosary basilica, Bishop Luc Crepy gave the homily, exhorting his peers to play their part in “this fight against scandalous and criminal actions.”
Crepy, who was appointed earlier this year as the head of a church panel targeting pedophilia, announced a series of measures to fight child sexual abuse, including giving victims a voice and an ear, and a means to confide an act of pedophilia against. A prevention program starting in seminaries where young men are being trained for the priesthood and extending into individual dioceses is in the process of being set up. Legal procedures in the event a priest is accused of pedophilia are to be taught.
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