Boston, Mass., Apr 5, 2010 / 12:55 pm
In a statement released on his blog, the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O'Malley gave personal testimony to Pope Benedict XVI's commitment to ending sex abuse within the Church.
The Boston Cardinal recalls that since being named Bishop of Fall River in 1992 and subsequently Bishop of Palm Beach and Archbishop of Boston, "I have had the painful but privileged opportunity to meet with hundreds of survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their loved ones."
"During the course of Pope Benedict's visit to the United States in 2008, at a meeting with survivors from the Archdiocese of Boston, I presented the Holy Father a book inscribed with the first names of 1500 children who had been sexually abused by clergy and shared that the names marked with a gold cross were children who had died under tragic circumstances. The Holy Father was visibly moved as he read the names," he explains.
"What is very clear to me - and I think to all who are fair-minded - is that Cardinal Ratzinger and later Pope Benedict has been dedicated to eradicating sexual abuse in the Church and trying to rectify the mistakes of the past," the cardinal writes.