Pope says French abuse report is ‘moment of shame’

Pope Francis has said a damning report concerning sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France is “a moment of shame.”

A commission of enquiry had reported on Tuesday that an estimated 216,000 children and young people had been victims of sexual violence in the Catholic Church in France since the 1950s.

Together with the institutions run by the Church, there may have been 330,000 victims.

This is a “considerable” number, the pope said at a general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday.

He expressed “my sorrow and my pain to the victims for the trauma they have suffered. But also my shame, the shame of all of us, my shame.”

Francis urged bishops and church leaders in France to do everything possible to ensure that such incidents do not happen again and “so that the Church once again becomes a safe home for all.”

The French Bishops’ Conference on Wednesday reaffirmed that there should be financial compensation for the victims.

“You can’t repair the irreparable,” Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the French Bishops’ Conference, told broadcaster France Info.

The Church must recognize the victims and acknowledge its own wrongdoing, he said.

The bishop did not say anything specific about the possible amount of compensation.