VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio
[with audio]
(Vatican Radio) The meetings Pope Francis held this week with six survivors of sexual abuse were an “important and very positive” step on the road towards healing and better child protection in the Catholic Church. That’s according to an Irish abuse victim who now serves on the Vatican’s new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
As a 13 year old girl, Marie Collins was abused by a hospital chaplain, who was then protected by his archbishop and went on to abuse and rape other children over a period of 30 years. This week she was in the Vatican to accompany one of the six abuse survivors from the Ireland, Germany and the UK for Mass and a series of private encounters with Pope Francis at his Santa Marta residence.
“It was wonderful to see the Pope listening so intently and the survivor to feel heard and have the opportunity to say everything they wanted to say…..what I was most impressed about the meeting was the fact the Pope gave so much time, there was no hurry….and I spoke to most of the survivors as they came out from their meetings and the general feeling was they felt they had said what they wanted to say and had been heard….
No matter how much you know about abuse, or you read about it in theory, I think sitting across from a survivor who’s telling you what abuse has done to their life and their family, how devastating it all is, it must be emotional and I certainly observed the Pope reacting to what he was being told and I think it must have been a hugely emotional morning for himself as well as for the survivors…
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