Pope Francis asked for “forgiveness” to the people who have been “wounded” by all the “sins” of the Church and expressed his “shame” for it, at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica in which seven cardinals apologized for various misdeeds committed by the clergy, including sexual abuse.
“We ask forgiveness for all our sins,” the pope said in an unprecedented penitential vigil prior to the Synod, the assembly of bishops that begins on October 2 to address the most important issues for the Church.
Francisco wanted to write personally “the petitions for forgiveness read by some cardinals because it was necessary to call our main sins by name,” such as “the lack of courage to fight for peace”, the conversion of the world “from an oasis to a desert” and the sins against indigenous peoples, migrants and women, among others.
“How could we be credible if we do not recognize our mistakes and are inclined to heal the wounds we have caused with our sins? Healing begins by confessing the sin we have committed,” the pope said.
Victims speak before the Vatican
The The ceremony also included the testimony of three victims of said sins: a South African baritone who suffered sexual abuse by a member of the Catholic clergy; a nun originally from Syria who suffered the horrors of war and a migrant from the Ivory Coast who survived the violence of the migratory routes.
Among the cardinals who read the requests for forgiveness, Sean Patrick O’Malley, head of the Vatican commission that combats sexual abuse of children and adolescents in the Catholic Church, stood out. “I ask for forgiveness, feeling ashamed, for all the times that we faithful have been complicit and directly committed abuses of conscience, abuses of power and sexual abuses,” he said, before showing “shame and pain when thinking especially about the sexual abuses against minors and vulnerable people”, who are “weak and defenseless”, and those who “robbed their innocence”.
Other cardinals, including the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Argentine Víctor Manuel Fernández, intervened to ask forgiveness for sins “against peace, against indigenous populations, against immigrants, against women, the family and young people, against poverty and against the lack of listening, communion and participation of all.” Fernández, as Francisco looked on, added: “I ask for forgiveness, feeling ashamed for all the times we have given doctrinal justification for inhuman treatment.”
For its part, Cardinal Michael Czerny apologized for not always recognizing “the right and dignity of every human person, discriminating against and exploiting them,” and “particularly among indigenous peoples,” as well as “when we have been complicit in systems that favored slavery and colonialism.”
For Francis, “confession is an opportunity to restore trust in the Church, trust broken by our errors and sins,” he exclaimed, urging “to begin to heal the wounds that do not stop bleeding.”
“We ask forgiveness for all our sins, help us restore your face that we have disfigured by our infidelity”the pope stated before concluding by asking “forgiveness, feeling shame, to those who have been hurt by our sins. “We all ask for forgiveness, we are all sinners.”
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