The Pope says he is “sad and ashamed”

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis said on Wednesday he was saddened and embarrassed by the inability of the Catholic Church to deal with child sexual abuse in France.

“I would like to express to the victims my sadness, my pain for the trauma they have suffered and my shame, our shame, for the inability of the Church, to put them at the center of their concerns”, declared Francis in his general weekly. public.

A day after an investigation revealed that the French clergy had abused more than 200,000 children over the age of 70 (330,000 if you count the abuses committed by laypeople), the pontiff called on the Catholics of France to take responsibility for what happened to make the Church a “safe home for all.”

“It is the moment of shame”, he declared, while calling on the bishops to do everything possible so that “similar tragedies do not happen again”.

Jean-Marc Sauve, head of the commission that wrote the report, said the Church has been indifferent to abuse for years, preferring to protect itself rather than the victims, many of whom are between 10 and 13 years old. The peak of the abuse took place between 1950 and 1970, the commission said in its report, with cases apparently resurfacing in the early 1990s (Reuters)