VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
Pope Francis’ Commission for the Protection of Minors, meeting in the Vatican, May 1-3, expressed solidarity with the victims/survivors of sexual abuse of minors by priests, and promises it will seek accountability for child protection “at all levels in the Church”
GERARD O’CONNELL
ROME
“I’m coming away with a very positive view from the meeting!” That was the verdict of Marie Collins, a married woman who had been sexually abused as a child by a priest in Dublin, Ireland, after participating in the first plenary meeting of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors set up by Pope Francis last December.
She gave her positive verdict on the Commission’s work at a press conference in the Vatican, May 3, sitting beside Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, one of the leading American bishops in the fight against child abuse of minors by clergy, and Fr Hans Zollner, the German Jesuit who organized a major international symposium on this matter at Rome’s Gregorian University three years ago.
Collins revealed that she had met Pope Francis twice in these days, “something I could not have even imagined happening some years ago”. She is the first victim of child abuse that Pope Francis has met since.
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