Pope to meet sex-abuse victims at Vatican

Associated Press

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE

Pope Francis announced Monday he would meet soon with a group of sex-abuse victims at the Vatican and declared “zero tolerance” for any member of the clergy who would violate a child.

Francis also revealed that three bishops are currently under investigation by the Vatican for abuse-related reasons, though it wasn’t clear if they were accused of committing abuse itself or of having covered it up.

“There are no privileges,” he told reporters en route back to Rome from Jerusalem.

The meeting with a half-dozen victims will mark the first such encounter for the pope, who has been criticized by victims for not expressing personal solidarity with them when he has reached out to other people who suffer.

Francis said the meeting and a Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives would take place early next month. A statement from the office of Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who is organizing the encounter, said the date and details hadn’t been finalized but that the meeting was expected to take place “in the coming months.”

“On this issue we must go forward, forward. Zero tolerance,” Francis said, calling abuse of children an “ugly” crime that betrays God.

The executive director of the main U.S. victims’ group, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, dismissed the meeting as “just utterly, utterly meaningless.”