VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis opened a landmark summit on preventing clerical sexual abuse Thursday, saying Catholics were looking to church leaders not for “simple and predictable condemnations,” but instead “concrete and effective measures” to deal with the scourge.
“May the Virgin Mary enlighten us to try and heal the great wounds that the scandal of pedophilia has caused in both children and the believers,” Francis said.
He called abuse a “plague” and asked that bishops in attendance “listen to the screams of the little ones asking for justice.”
The pontiff’s brief address kicked off one of the most critical points of his papacy, a gathering of the world’s leading bishops to discuss a problem that the Catholic Church for decades has struggled to curb — and that has now damaged the pope’s own reputation.
Church officials have called the four-day meeting one phase in a long process, not a cure-all for the scourge. But the pope and the Vatican face intense pressure to push bishops from across the world to take the issue seriously, even in parts of the world where abuse scandals have not yet broken into the public.
Francis did not specify Thursday what kind of concrete measures could result from the summit, and in late January he had tried to downplay expectations for the event. But organizers have said that the meeting aims to give bishops a clearer sense of guidelines for how to deal with abuse accusations — while emphasizing the imperative to not keep those accusations silent.
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