DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Crux

August 20, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr.

In a forceful letter just ahead of his Aug. 25-26 trip to Ireland, and just after a blistering Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on sex abuse crimes and cover-ups in six dioceses, Pope Francis wrote Monday “no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.”

Referring to the Grand Jury report, the pontiff wrote, “The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or [which] sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity.”

The pope’s words came in a “Letter to the People of God,” released by the Vatican…