A bombshell report which claimed French priests, and teachers and lay workers sexually abused a third of a million children since 1950 represented a “moment of shame” for the Catholic Church, the Pope has said.
At his weekly general audience, Pope Francis told French pilgrims that he wished “to express to the victims my sadness and grief at the trauma they have suffered”.
The Holy Father also expressed his own personal shame “at the Church’s too long failure” to place victims at the centre of its concerns, and urged the French Bishops and religious superiors “to continue to make every effort so that similar tragedies will not be repeated”.
