"I just want to let you guys know that I stand with my brothers and sisters from across the world," Rizzo said in his speech. "We will never stop this fight until we bring [members of the Catholic clergy] down on their knees and they ask for forgiveness from us."
"If they want to be judged, so be it. They are the ones responsible for this mess and they are the ones that will have to clean up this mess!"
Other victims' groups were also present at the rally, including an Italian group from the "Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf." Several members from the institute group were dressed in costumes of priests' vestments, and one, dressed to represent a Catholic cardinal, stood silently holding a baby doll, exposing its undressed bottom half to cameras.
People gathered held signs with sayings such as, "Justice for clergy abuse survivors," "Too many pedophile clerics. Judge the Popes now," and "Secular justice for ALL."
Many victims wore shirts or signs with photos of their abusers, their names and the age at which they were abused. Some of those at the rally held drums, and at one point, a group began chanting with the drums: "zero, zero, zero."
Some people at the rally handed out papers with comics depicting obscene scenes between children and men dressed in clerical attire. One showed a bishop standing against a wall with arms outstretched and the image of a prepubescent boy hanging on his back, as if crucified.
A few people from the Italian "Union of Atheists and Rational Agnostics" were also present to take part in the rally, whose speakers included Peter Isley, a founding member and spokesperson of ECA, and Sara Oviedo, former vice president of the United Nations' Committee on the Rights of the Child.
An Ecuadorian, Oviedo said "ECA demands full reparations for children, priests, nuns, and other people that have been abused by the Church," adding, "They have to guarantee that sexual abuse will not be committed by priests anymore or by any other members of the Church."
Started in August 2017, the mission of ECA, according to their website, "is to compel the Roman Catholic Church to end clergy abuse," which they define to include sexual, physical, spiritual, and psychological abuses or violence.
Among the goals listed on their website is to "hold accountable the Roman Catholic Church, and to demand an "end to the Church's structural mechanism that allows abuse."
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.