The independent commission called on the Catholic Church to help compensate the victims, notably in cases that are too old to prosecute via the courts.
The independent commission called on the Catholic Church to help compensate the victims, notably in cases that are too old to prosecute via the courts.
PARIS (Reuters) - A group of victims of sexual abuse says the Catholic church is reacting too slowly to a report revealing assaults by French clergy on more than 200,000 children, and is urging President Emmanuel Macron to raise the issue directly with Pope Francis on Monday.
The report landed on French Catholics like a bomb. French bishops had never considered sexual abuse a serious problem. “We have been in denial for 20 years,” Father Goujon said. “The bishops said that [that kind of abuse] could never happen here.”
Pope Francis agreed Monday to meet with the commission that published a ground-breaking report into clergy sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church and, separately, expressed sadness over the sudden downfall of the archbishop of Paris, according to French bishops who met with him.