From Mexico, Church Sex Abuse Survivors Seek More Than Pope Francis' Apology Jason Berry - GlobalPost
go to original July 11, 2014

Pope Francis apologizes to clerical sex abuse victims and asks for forgiveness. (AFP/CristianB.)

Pope Francis said the clergy abuse crisis was "camouflaged with a complicity that cannot be explained" Monday in Rome.

He also used some of his most emotional language yet in a Vatican-distributed video of his sermon at a private Mass for six adults victimized by priests as children.

The survivors, two each from Ireland, Germany and the UK, spent the weekend at Santa Marta, the Vatican residential hotel where the pope lives. It typically houses visiting churchmen.

The group had breakfast with the pope, and met individually with him in sessions through the morning.

Francis compared clerical abuse of children to "a sacrilegious cult."

The pope spoke, too, like a sinner in confession: "I beg your forgiveness, too for the sins of omissions on the part of church leaders who did not respond adequately to reports of abuse made by family members, as well as by abuse victims themselves."

"Are sins of omissions not also crimes?" Alberto Athié, a prominent advocate for abuse survivors, said in an interview by phone from his home in Mexico City.

"Is this only about local ecclesiastical authorities, when in fact they were and are acting under the provisions of the Holy See?" ruminated Athié, who left the priesthood and a high-profile position with the Mexican bishops' conference in 1999, protesting the cover-up of a pedophile.

"Or is the sin of omission a crime of cardinals of the Holy See, and even popes John Paul and Benedict?" said Athié, a respected moral voice in Mexico.

The question casts a long shadow over a crisis that has escalated, under three popes now, as highly-charged civil cases, prosecutions and government investigations have undercut the church's image and moral standing in Western countries, while a more recent movement of protesters has risen in Latin America.

Read the rest at TucsonSentinel.com

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