GERMANY
Premium Times
Pope Francis on Wednesday asked for forgiveness from the families of child sex abuse victims who had killed themselves as a result of their trauma.
He equally commended one survivor for telling his story.
In comments published in German tabloid Bild, the pope described Daniel Pittet’s memoir “Father, I Forgive You’’ as a testament to “how deeply embedded evil can be in the heart of a servant of the church.’’
Pittet was subjected to repeated rape and sexual abuse by a Capuchin friar as a child.
Today, he is a priest and campaigns against paedophilia in the Catholic Church.
The pontiff expressed his “love and pain’’ to families who had lost abused loved ones to suicide, asking them “with full humility for forgiveness.’’
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