ROME, Italy (CNN) — Pope Francis, speaking on the final day of a historic summit on clergy sexual abuse, called priests and other Catholics who abuse children “tools of Satan,” but offered no concrete steps to address the church’s massive and morally damning abuse crisis.
“The brutality of this worldwide phenomenon becomes all the more grave and scandalous in the church, for it is utterly incompatible with (its) moral authority and ethical credibility,” the Pope said in a speech in Vatican City on Sunday.
“Consecrated persons,” he continued, “chosen by God to guide souls to salvation, let themselves be dominated by their human frailty or sickness and thus become tools of Satan.”
The Pope’s speech, delivered at the end of Mass at Sala Regia in the Apostolic Palace, came at the end of an unprecedented gathering of 190 Catholic leaders, including 114 bishops from around the world, to address a clergy sexual abuse scandal that stretches across several continents.
In his wide-ranging speech on Sunday, Francis framed the church’s abuse crisis within the wider context of society, even saying that pagans, in history, had “sacrificed children” in rituals.
“We are thus facing a universal problem,” the Pope said, “tragically present almost everywhere and affecting everyone. Yet we need to be clear, that while gravely affecting our societies as a whole, this evil is in no way less monstrous when it takes place within the church.”
