Survivors To Meet with Organizers of A Vatican Summit On Preventing Clergy Sex Abuse

Survivors To Meet with Organizers of A Vatican Summit On Preventing Clergy Sex Abuse

Organizers of Pope Francis’ summit on preventing clergy sex abuse will meet this week with a dozen abuse victims who have descended on Rome to protest the Catholic Church’s response to the crisis and demand an end to decades of cover-up by church leaders, officials said Monday.

Survivors of this abuse will not be addressing the summit of church leaders itself. Rather, they will meet Wednesday with the four-member organizing committee to convey their complaints.

One of the largest summit of up-to 190 presidents of bishops’ conferences from all around the world, plus key Vatican officials, begins Thursday.

In the press conference Monday, organizers referred to  the summit a “turning point” in the church’s approach to clergy sex abuse. The Catholic Church has long been criticized for its failure to hold bishops accountable when they covered up for priests who raped and molested young children.