LONDON (ENGLAND)
BBC
February 7, 2019
A day after Pope Francis publicly admitted for the first time that clerics had sexually abused nuns, promising to tackle the issue that was “still going on” within the Catholic Church, two former female members of the Church have spoken about their experiences with the BBC.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Thursday morning, the women welcomed the pontiff’s acknowledgement of the scandal, saying that for too long there had been a “culture of silence and secrecy within the hierarchy”.
But the descriptions of their experiences will only serve to exacerbate a scandal that continues to rock the Catholic Church.
Dr Rocio Figueroa says she was “very naive”
Dr Figueroa is a theologian and lecturer in Auckland, New Zealand, and a survivor of abuse she says she suffered at the hands of a priest in Lima, Peru.
She told the BBC that she joined the society of apostolic life within the Catholic Church as a teenager living in a “very poor part of the world” because she “needed to do something”.
“I was 15 years old and the founder asked me to begin a spiritual direction with a vicar, who became my spiritual director.
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