Raj Ahmed of DOT : Making one of his strongest comments ever on the crisis sweeping the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis urged priests who have sexually abused minors to turn themselves in. While it was not immediately clear if Francis was referring to the Church judicial system, civil justice, or both, Vatican sources believed it was the first time the pope had made such a direct appeal.
“To those who abuse minors I would say this: convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis said yesterday in his traditional Christmas address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.
He spoke two months before an extraordinary summit on the sexual abuse crisis that will be attended by the heads of some 110 national Catholic bishops’ conferences and dozens of experts and leaders of religious orders in the Vatican.
Francis has previously used the Christmas address to denounce cases of corruption and mismanagement in the Curia. This time, he concentrated on the global sexual abuse crisis.
“Let it be clear that, faced with these abominations, the Church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whoever has committed such crimes. The Church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case,” he pledged.
Although the pope made similar promises of zero tolerance in the past, victim groups scoffed at the promises, saying the Church has to come up with a clear policy to make bishops themselves accountable for the mishandling of abuse cases.
-Source: Reuters