ROME (ITALY)
Religion News Service
February 21, 2019
By Jack Jenkins
Pope Francis on Thursday (Feb. 21) opened a highly anticipated four-day meeting on his church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis by calling on the assembled bishops and other Catholic leaders to “hear the cry of the little ones who plead for justice” and be “concrete.”
“The holy People of God look to us, and expect from us not simple and predictable condemnations, but concrete and effective measures to be undertaken. We need to be concrete,” Francis said.
But as the day wore on and the nearly 200 clerics debated ways to respond to the crisis, it became less clear which “concrete” responses can be agreed upon by a global church rattled by multiple scandals, or whether they will satisfy abuse victims.
Francis opened the conference the featured episcopal presidents of the more than 150 nations by distributing 21 “reflection points” for consideration by church leaders. The recommendations included preparing a handbook for local churches to follow in abuse cases, establishing protocols for handling accusations against bishops and raising the minimum age for marriage to 16.
At a news conference after the session, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, former director of the Holy See press office, described the list as “starting points” for conversation among bishops. But Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia, speaking after Lombardi, made clear that the bishops’ various perspectives on abuse were as different as the countries they represented.
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