DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Crux
August 20, 2018
By John L. Allen Jr.
In a forceful letter just ahead of his Aug. 25-26 trip to Ireland, and just after a blistering Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on sex abuse crimes and cover-ups in six dioceses, Pope Francis wrote Monday “no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.”
Referring to the Grand Jury report, the pontiff wrote, “The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or [which] sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity.”
The pope’s words came in a “Letter to the People of God,” released by the Vatican Press Office in seven languages, suggesting the Vatican wants it to have the widest possible distribution. The full text runs to just under 2,000 words.
On the subject of accountability not just for the crime but the cover-up, an issue that figured prominently in the Pennsylvania report, Francis vowed that such measures have to be part of any solution.
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