VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press
February 15, 2018
The Vatican said Thursday that Pope Francis meets frequently with victims of sexual abuse, seeking to defuse a mounting scandal over his unbridled support for a Chilean bishop accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring their abuse.
Spokesman Greg Burke said in a statement that Francis meets in private with victims individually or in groups several times a month to “listen to them and try to help them to heal their serious wounds.”
In comments also released Thursday, Francis called clerical sex abuse a “humiliation” that exposes the church’s “hypocrisy.”
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