UNITED STATES
Vox

Updated by Brandon Ambrosino on July 8, 2014

Pope Francis compared pedophiliac priests to a “sacrilegious cult” on Monday. The statement was part of a homily Francis delivered to six victims of clerical sex abuse that he’d invited to a private mass inside the Vatican. After his message, he held 30-minute one-on-one conversations with each victim.

Thousands of minors were abused by Catholic clergy between 1950 and 2002, a 2004 report from John Jay found. In some cases, high-ranking Catholic officials knew of this abuse and either failed to report it to the authorities, or — more shockingly — covered it up. Andrew Sullivan said this revelation “shell-shocked” the Church, and claimed that “many Catholics [would] never feel the same way they once did about this institution.” When Francis took over St. Peter’s throne, many had high hopes that he’d be the Pope to once and…