VATICAN CITY
GMA News

DARIO THUBURN, Agence France Presse February 8, 2012

VATICAN CITY – Catholic leaders asked God for forgiveness for the crimes of paedophile priests at a church service on Tuesday after an Irish victim said the Vatican should be held accountable for destroying lives.

The heads of seven religious orders intoned penitential prayers in a church in Rome on the sidelines of a first-ever Vatican summit to look at ways of rooting out child abuse from the Church after thousands of scandals.

“We have sinned. We did not know how to listen to the pain of so many innocent ones,” one of the bishops taking part in the service said.

“We are aware that our acts of reparation can never erase the unjust things we have done or soothe the searing wound of our consciousness,” he said.