Pope Francis on Saturday described his “pain and shame” over the “repellent crimes” of the sex-abuse scandal that is roiling the Catholic Church, and pledged to put an end to clergy exploitation of children.
“The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others — adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage, and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community,” Francis said in a speech to Irish political and religious leaders in Dublin.
“I myself share those sentiments,” he said, promising to “eliminate this scourge in the church, at any cost.”
The pontiff spoke in private with eight Irish sex-abuse survivors during a 90-minute meeting.
“Very powerful meeting. He listened with a genuine interest,” said Clodagh Malone.
Behind closed doors, attendees said, Francis condemned the culture of corruption and cover-up within the church as “caca.”
That’s “literally filth as one sees in a toilet,” his translator explained, according to some attendees.
A Vatican official said he wasn’t surprised that the pope had used that word.
The statements of remorse came as the church grapples with its decades-long failure to shield children from abusive clergy members around the world.
A Pennsylvania grand jury report Aug. 15 detailed hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of minors going back to the 1940s. And this week, The Post reported that the Archdiocese of New York has paid out nearly $60 million to 278 sex abuse victims over the past two years.
Francis’ two-day visit to predominately Catholic Ireland is the first since that of Pope John Paul II in 1979. That year, an estimated 2.7 million people turned out to greet the Polish pope.
Only a quarter of that number — including protesters — lined Dublin’s streets to see Francis in his Popemobile, reflecting the church’s waning influence in the increasingly secular nation.
Some abuse survivors said the pope’s rhetoric was not enough to heal their wounds.
“Underwhelmed,” activist Ursula Halligan told the BBC.
