International
Pope Francis urges abusive priests to “turn themselves in”
Pope Francis dedicated his annual Christmas speech to the Vatican bureaucracy to the worrying issue of sex abuse rocking the Catholic church.
During his speech on Friday, Pope Francis also vowed that the Catholic Church will “never again” cover up clergy sex abuse and also demanded that priests who have raped and molested children turn themselves in.
He urged victims to come forward and issued a stark warning to abusers: “Convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice.”
Read also: 500 more Catholic clergy accused of sexually abuse minors
“Let it be clear that, faced with these abominations, the Church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whoever has committed such crimes. The Church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case,” he said.
The comments by Pope Francis is coming a day after 500 more clergymen in illinois, USA were accused of sexually abusing minors.
Illinois attorney general had issued a blistering report about clergy sexual abuse, saying that Catholic dioceses in the US state has not released the names of at least 500 clergy accused of sexually abusing children.
According to the office of Lisa Madigan, the attorney general, the church’s six archdioceses have done a woefully inadequate job of investigating allegations, while the dioceses has disclosed 45 more names of those credibly accused, the total number of names disclosed is only 185.
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