ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) – Pope Francis has for the first time publicly acknowledged the scandal of priests and bishops sexually abusing nuns and says he is committed to doing more to fight the problem.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Francis noted that Pope Benedict XVI had taken action against a France-based order after some of its religious sisters had been reduced to “sexual slavery” at the hands the priest who founded the order and other priests.
“Should we do something more? Yes. Is there the will? Yes. But it’s a path that we have already begun,” Francis said while returning home from the United Arab Emirates.
“It’s not that everyone does this, but there have been priests and bishops who have,” Francis added. “And I think that it’s continuing because it’s not like once you realize it that it stops. It continues. And for some time we’ve been working on it.”
The issue has come to the fore amid the Catholic Church’s overall reckoning with the sexual abuse of minors and the #MeToo-inspired acknowledgement that adults can be victims of abuse whenever there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. In the past year, The Associated Press and other media have reported on cases of abused nuns in India, Africa, Europe and South America – evidence that the problem is by no means limited to a certain geographic area.