VATICAN CITY
The Guardian (UK)
Reuters
theguardian.com, Saturday 18 January 2014
Pope Francis will not show leniency towards paedophile priests as truth and justice are more important than protecting the church, the Vatican’s former sex crimes prosecutor has pledged.
Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the most authoritative Catholic official on the church’s abuse crisis, said on Saturday that the number of clerics defrocked by the Vatican was likely to have fallen to about 100 in 2013 from about 125 in 2012 and a peak of 260 in 2011.
Scicluna said Francis would, despite his merciful nature, be very tough on paedophile priests after an abuse crisis that the pope on Thursday called “the shame of the church”.
“I have met with Francis and he has expressed great determination to continue on the line of his predecessors,” said Scicluna, who served in the Vatican for 17 years before he was named an auxiliary bishop in his native Malta in 2012.
“His gospel of mercy is very important but it is not cheap mercy. It has to respect the truth and the demands of justice,” Scicluna said.
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.