The Pope expresses his “shame” at the scandal of sexual abuse against children in the Catholic Church of France

The Pope Francisco He expressed “his shame” on Wednesday after the publication of a detailed and devastating report on the sexual abuse of children within the Church of France during decades.

“I wish to express to the victims my sadness and my pain for the traumas suffered and also my shame, our shame, for the inability of the Church for a long time to put them at the center of their concerns”, said Francisco during a general audience.

SIGHT: Pederasty in the Catholic Church of France: 330,000 sexual abuse in 70 years

“I pray and we all pray together. Yours is the glory, Lord, and ours is the shame. It is the moment of shame ”, insisted the pope.

Francis invited all religious leaders to “continue with their efforts so that similar dramas are not reproduced.”

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In addition, he urged French Catholics to “assume their responsibilities so that the Church is a safe home for all.”

An independent report published Tuesday in France concluded that more than 216,000 minors were victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in the country since 1950.

Priests and religious abused 216,000 minors between 1950 and 2020, although the figure would rise to 330,000 if one takes into account acts perpetrated by lay people who worked in religious institutions, pointed out the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase) in France .

On Tuesday, in a statement released by the Vatican, the pope had already expressed his “immense pain” and his “gratitude” to the victims “for their courage to denounce.

The Argentine pontiff has made the fight against sexual assaults one of his priorities and published in 2020 a manual to manage complaints in the Church.

Elected in 2013 to make changes in a Church shaken by scandals, Francisco had a series of mistakes, in particular during his trip to Chile at the beginning of 2018, having questioned the complaints against the priest Fernando Karadima, accused and convicted of sexual abuse.

The battle to change the mindset

After acknowledging his mistake, Francisco sent a special mission to Chile to find out the truth about what happened. Later, he listened to victims of the abuses in the Vatican and then, in an unprecedented event of great significance, he summoned all the Chilean bishops to Rome, who in front of him presented their resignation.

In February 2018, he summoned the presidents of the bishops’ conferences from around the world for an unprecedented summit on pedophilia and in 2019 he lifted the pontifical secret for cases of pedophilia. A historic measure that put an end to one of the greatest excuses on which the wall of silence was built around abuses.

In June 2021 he announced the reform of the Code of Canon Law and introduced an article that contemplates pedophilia and specifically the crimes of abuse against minors committed by priests.

This code, which will be in force as of December 2021, toughens penalties, extends the statute of limitations and compensates victims.

Since the first abuse scandals broke out more than 35 years ago, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has taken a series of preventive measures and has also adopted laws, apologized and issued sentences, but without making the abuses or the call disappear. “Cover-up culture”, meaning the mentality of keeping everything secret.

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Deshawn