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Pope Francis expresses shame for child abuses by clergy in France

Wednesday, 06 October 2021 10:38 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 06 October 2021 10:53 AM ]

Pope Francis reacts during the weekly general audience at Paul-VI hall in the Vatican, on October 6, 2021. (Photo by AFP)

The Catholic Church's leader Pope Francis has expressed sadness and shame over the Church's inability to deal with the sexual abuse of children by the clergy in France.

Francis' expression of regret came after an independent commission investigating sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in France published a 2,500-page document on Tuesday, revealing abuses committed by priests and other people involved in the church on an estimated 216,000 children in a seven-decade span.

Probe finds 330,000 children abused in French Catholic Church

A new report reveals that an estimated 216,000 children have been subjected to “systematic” abuse within the French Catholic Church over the past 70 years.

"I would like to express to the victims my sadness, sorrow for the trauma they have suffered and also my shame, our shame, for the Church's inability, for too long, to put them at the center of its concerns," the pontiff said on Wednesday.

Speaking at Vatican City during a weekly address to the general public, he called on the Catholic Church leaders to make every possible effort to ensure that "similar tragedies do not happen again."

He insisted that the Church needed to turn itself into a "safe home for everyone."

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is gradually reacting to the report of the independent commission. Olivier de Germay, the archbishop of Lyon, expressed his "shame" and asked for "forgiveness" on Tuesday afternoon.

Lyon's French Archbishop Olivier de Germay talks to journalists in Lyon archbishopric on October 5, 2021, on the day of the publishing of a report by an independent commission on sexual abuse by Catholic Church officials. (Photo by AFP)

"I ask their forgiveness," Germay said, addressing the victims targeted by pedophile priests and other church members.

The independent commission probing the sexual abuse of minors by church members revealed that thousands of pedophile priests had operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950.