(17 Aug 2018) The Vatican on Thursday expressed "shame and sorrow" about a scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy who raped and molested children in six dioceses and decried the abuse as "criminally and morally reprehensible".
In uncharacteristically strong language for the Holy See, even in matters like the long running abuse scandals staining the US church, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said that victims should know "the Pope is on their side".
Pope Francis himself wasn't quoted in the statement, and there was no mention of demands in the United States among some Catholics for the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington.
The grand jury report made public this week accused the cardinal of helping to protect some molester priests while he was previously bishop of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Burke, in the statement, described the abuse in the report as "betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith".
The pontiff had recently accepted the resignation from cardinal's rank of former Washington archbishop Theodore McCarrick for alleged sexual misconduct.
It was the first time a prelate had lost his cardinal's rank in a sexual abuse scandal, and Francis was stepping up his crackdown on the abuse to include some of the highest ranking churchmen.
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