ROME
CRUX
June 20, 2018
By Inés San Martín
In a wide-ranging interview in which he spoke about the ongoing migrant crisis in the United States, Pope Francis also touched on issues such as female ordination, the ongoing Vatican talks with China and the clerical sexual abuse scandals in Chile.
The conversation between Francis and a journalist from British news agency Reuters took place on Sunday afternoon, and sections of it were published on Wednesday. Reuters also provided a transcript of portions of the interview to Vatican journalists.
Clerical sexual abuse scandals and the Chilean case
“I don’t like talking about this now, but I must say this,” Francis told journalist Philip Pullela. “Go to the statistics. The great majority of the abuses take place in the family environment and in the neighborhoods, the neighbors, the families, then in the gym, the pools, the schools and also in the Church, but some can say the [priests] are few, but even if it was only one [priest] it’d be tragic because that priest has the duty to take that person to God and has destroyed the path to God.”
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