VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 11 April 2014 (VIS) – This morning Pope Francis received in audience a delegation from the International Catholic Child Bureau (BICE), instituted following Pope Pius XII’s appeal for the defence of children following the Second World War. Since then, this organisation, “born of the maternity of the Church”, as Pope Francis remarked, has been committed to promoting the defence of the rights of children, also contributing to the 1989 United Nations Convention and working in constant collaboration with the Holy See in New York, Strasbourg and above all in Geneva.

Francis, after stating that in a well-constructed society, privileges should only be for children and the elderly because the future of the people is in their hands”, went on to comment on the theme of abuse of minors. “I feel that I must take responsibility for all the harm that some priests…