USA/IN AIR: U.S. activist calls Pope's sexual assault meeting "probably meaningless"

Record ID: 334754

  • Title: USA/IN AIR: U.S. activist calls Pope's sexual assault meeting "probably meaningless"
  • Date: 27th May 2014
  • Summary: IN AIR (MAY 26, 2014) (AGENCY POOL) POPE FRANCIS SPEAKING WITH MEDIA
  • Embargoed: 11th June 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Crime,Religion
  • Reuters ID: LVA5JQFBLGB53UIFBGUBJVI9PWK8
  • Story Text: David Lorenz of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) says Pope Francis' announcement that he will be meeting with victims of sexual assault is "probably meaningless" and a "PR move" unless action takes place.


    Pope Francis said on Monday (May 26) that he will have his first meeting with a group of sex abuse victims at the Vatican early next month and said he would show zero tolerance for anyone in the Catholic Church who abused children, including bishops.
    Francis said he would meet with eight victims and Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley of Boston, who is head of a commission set up to study ways of dealing with the crisis.
    Speaking to reporters for nearly an hour on the plane taking him back from a visit to the Middle East, the Pope looked alert despite the gruelling three-day trip and overruled his spokesman who suggested the airborne news conference should be cut short to all him to rest.
    Back in the United States, victims' advocates were less than impressed.
    "My first reaction is that it's probably meaningless," said David Lorenz, the state director for Maryland at the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) on Tuesday (May 27). "It'd be nice for the six people who actually get met. But there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other victims who aren't being met and whose needs aren't being met, and unless there's action that comes out of this it's a meaningless PR move, and it's less than symbolic."
    Francis said six to eight victims, several from Europe, would attend his morning Mass and then he would meet with them. It will be the first time for Francis to meet sexual abuse victims since his election in March 2013.
    Lorenz felt meeting only a handful of victims was unfair to the many other victims.
    "[The other victims] can't get the church to talk to them. They can't get the church to respond to them. And here he's taking six people, and he's treating them like, and he's going to hold them up in front of the world and say well, look at it, aren't I wonderful cause I talked to six people," Lorenz said. "He should be walking around the globe, standing out in front of the house of every victim and begging for forgiveness."
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