Francis was speaking a day after a landmark report revealed that members of the Catholic clergy in France sexually assaulted approximately 216,000 minors over the past seven decades and that the Church made protecting the institution a priority. report to survivors who were asked to remain silent.
The number of abused minors rises to around 330,000 if we include victims of people who were not members of the clergy but who had other ties to the Church, such as Catholic schools and programs for children. youth.
The damning French report follows similar inquiries in other countries which have damaged the reputation of the Catholic Church in recent years.
In his weekly remarks to the Vatican on Wednesday morning, the Pope expressed his shame that the Church had ignored victims of sexual abuse for too long, saying he wanted the Church to be a “safe home for everyone” .
The Pope did not directly address the ongoing abuse allegations in his comments on Wednesday. However, he encouraged bishops and Church leaders to “continue to do everything possible to ensure that similar tragedies do not happen again.”
“I express the closeness and paternal support to the priests of France in the face of this evidence,” he said, adding: “It’s hard. But is it healthy.”
Francis also assured the survivors of sexual abuse of his prayers and said: “I wish to express my pain and my pain to the victims for the trauma they have suffered and also my shame, our shame, my shame for too long. inability of the church to put them at the center of its attention. “
The report specifies that “the Catholic Church is the place where the prevalence of sexual violence is the highest, apart from family circles and friends”. He revealed that children were also more likely to be abused in the Church than in public schools or summer camps.
Jean-Marc Sauvé, chairman of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) which wrote the report, said on Tuesday that while most of the violence occurred between 1950 and 1968, it still persists today. .
The mistreatment of minors within the Church accounts for nearly 4% of all sexual violence in France, according to Sauvé.
“The problem is not behind us, it is still there,” he said.
More than half of the abuses detailed in the report occurred before 1969, when the Church in France ignored abuses by people it put in power, according to Sauvé.
“This first period (…) is marked by the absolutely total indifference of the Church towards the victims. The suffering of the victims, the prejudice (sustained by) the victims, the trauma of the victims, in fact, do not exist. not, ”Sauvé told CNN.
Over 70 years, “the attitude of the Church could be summed up in an attitude of dissimulation, of relativization or even of denial, with only a very recent recognition dating from 2015, and even then, unequally accepted by the dioceses and the institutions. religious, ”the report says.
CNN’s Simon Bouvier and Sam Bradpiece contributed reporting.
