Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s adherence to a ‘zero tolerance’ of child abuse by members of the clergy in a letter to his bishops on the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
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The feast day, held on December 28, is usually reserved by the papacy to restate the Church’s opposition to abortion.
The 80-year-old pontiff used the occasion to draw attention to the estimated 75 million children around the world who are in situations of emergency and crisis, noting that in 2015 68 per cent of all victims of sexual exploitation were children, and one-third of all children living outside their homeland were forcibly displaced.
“We hear these children and their cries of pain; we also hear the cry of the Church our Mother, who weeps not only for the pain caused to her youngest sons and daughters, but also because she recognizes the sins of some of her members: the sufferings, the experiences and the pain of minors who were abused sexually by priests. It is a sin that shames us,” wrote Pope Francis.
“Persons responsible for the protection of those children destroyed their dignity. We regret this deeply and we beg forgiveness. We join in the pain of the victims and weep for this sin. The sin of what happened, the sin of failing to help, the sin of covering up and denial, the sin of the abuse of power. The Church also weeps bitterly over this sin of her sons and she asks forgiveness.”
Abuse survivor Peter Blenkiron says he is pleased that the Pope has sought to make the Church’s position clear.
“It’s great that the Catholic Church and the Papal position has finally caught up with the majority of the rest of the world; that most of us already understand that raping children isn’t acceptable,” Mr Blenkiron said.
“History will now judge how they support those that were damaged in the past – in a way that’s effective, not just ‘here’s some money, see you later’.”
Jesuit priest Father Frank Brennan say the template issued by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on December 6 must be seen in a global context, and that criticisms such as those by Kieran Tapsell, saying the Church is still hiding behind canon law, fail to comprehend how the template must work in different countries with widely variant cultures.
“It’s a pastoral letter,” said Fr Brennan. “I would not expect to find anything in that letter setting out procedures for dealing with child sexual abuse.”
