MASSACHUSETTS
Herald News
By Brian Fraga
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Dec 21, 2013
Pope Francis has invited homeless men for dinner and embraced physically handicapped people in St. Peter’s Square.
But Robert M. Hoatson said the pope has yet to connect with victims of clergy sex abuse.
“What greater population of need is there than people who have been abused by their own clergy?” said Hoatson, a survivor of clergy sex abuse and co-founder and president of Road to Recovery Inc., a New Jersey-based nonprofit that advocates for sex abuse victims.
Hoatson, along with nine other high-profile Catholic whistleblowers on clergy sex abuse, signed an open letter on Dec. 9 to Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston and a member of Pope Francis’ panel of cardinals that advises him on church governance and reform.
The letter called upon Cardinal O’Malley, the former bishop of Fall River, to appoint Hoatson and two other victim advocates to the new commission that Pope Francis is creating to advise him on protecting children and counseling victims of sex abuse.
Hoatson, whose organization has advocated for sex abuse victims in the Diocese of Fall River, said the new Vatican commission needs to focus on providing victims with legal, juridical and psychological services, not just pastoral initiatives.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.