ROME (ITALY)
Australian Broadcasting
February 22, 2019
The first woman to speak at a Vatican conference on sexual abuse of minors has called for bishops to kneel before their victims and their victims’ families.
The summit’s second day focused on the different ways the Catholic Church treated sexual abuse worldwide
Linda Ghisoni, an undersecretary in one of the Vatican offices, made her comments in front of Pope Francis and a gathering of nearly 200 bishops and other Catholic leaders at a four-day meeting to discuss the church’s numerous sexual abuse scandals.
She said that taking responsibility and kneeling would be the “appropriate posture” to deal with the issue of sexual abuse of minors in the church.
“Kneeling before the victims and their families, in front of the abusers, their collaborators, those that refuse, those who are unjustly accused, to the negligent, to those who have covered up, to those who tried to speak up and act but were silenced, to the indifferent.
“Kneel before the merciful Father, who sees the lacerated body of Christ, his church. He sends us to take responsibility, as his people, of the wounds and to cure them with the balm of his love.”
On the second day of the meeting the debate shifted to how church leaders must acknowledge that decades of cover-ups and secrecy had only worsened the sex abuse crisis.
The religious leaders listened as Ms Ghisoni told them there should not be different ways of handling the problem in different parts of the world, and minors should be protected no matter where they were.
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