VATICAN CITY
Associated Press
September 29, 2018
Pope Francis asked Saturday for daily prayers to protect the Catholic Church from what he says are “attacks by the devil,” in his latest response to the clerical sex abuse and cover-up scandal roiling his papacy.
A Vatican statement appeared to be an indirect response to accusations that Francis himself, and a string of Vatican officials before him, were complicit in covering up the sexual misconduct of a now-disgraced American ex-cardinal.
The Vatican said Francis had asked for Catholics worldwide to unite and pray the Rosary each day during October “to protect the church from the devil, who is always looking to divide us from God and from one another.”
At the same time, Francis asked for prayers so the church becomes ever more aware of its “guilt, errors and abuses committed in the present and the past and is committed to combat it without fail to prevent evil from prevailing.”
Francis identified the devil as the “Great Accuser, who roams the earth looking for ways to accuse.”
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