The Dallas Morning News
By NICOLE WINFIELD The Associated Press
Published: 26 May 2014
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis announced Monday he would meet with a group of sex abuse victims next month at the Vatican and declared “zero tolerance” for any member of the clergy who would violate a child.
Francis also revealed that three bishops are currently under investigation by the Vatican for abuse-related reasons, though it wasn’t clear if they were accused of committing abuse itself or of having covered it up.
“There are no privileges,” he said.
The meeting with a half-dozen victims, which will include a Mass celebrated by Francis at the Vatican hotel where he lives, will mark the first such encounter for the pope, who has been criticized by victims for not expressing personal solidarity with them when he has reached out to other people who suffer.
In a press conference Monday aboard the papal plane returning from Jerusalem, Francis said he would travel to Sri Lanka and the Philippines in January 2015. And he suggested that he might follow in emeritus Pope Benedict XVI’s footsteps and retire if he no longer had the strength to do the job.
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