ROME — As a clamor builds for Pope Francis to respond to the stunning allegations by his former ambassador in Washington that he covered up abuse and lied about a meeting with a prominent opponent to same-sex marriage, the pontiff has extolled the virtues of silence. Speaking in a Monday morning homily at the Vatican, Francis said, “With people who don’t have good will, who seek only scandal, who want only division, who seek only destruction — including within the family: silence, prayer.” He added that “the truth is humble, the truth is silent” and concluded with the prayer, “May the Lord give us the grace to discern when we should speak and when we should stay silent.” So far, Francis has stuck with silence since the allegations first shook the church on Aug. 26. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Vatican ambassador, accused the pope of knowing about sexual misconduct by an American cardinal, Theodore E. McCarrick, with adult seminarians years before the abuse became public. Archbishop Viganò also said that Francis lifted sanctions on the cardinal that he claimed had been imposed by his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Those allegations remain unproven.<doc-sep>Rome (CNN) Pope Francis has acknowledged "with shame and repentance" the Catholic Church's failure to act over sexual abuse by clerics against minors going back decades, writing "we showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them." In an unusually blunt letter released by the Vatican on Monday, the Pope wrote, "I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. "Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated." His letter comes in the wake of a Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of sexual abuses by priests and cover-ups by bishops. Gruesome accounts of abuse The report said internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania -- some held in a secret archive to which only the bishop had a key -- show that more than 300 "predator priests" have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims. The lengthy catalog of clergy sexual abuses in the report makes for difficult reading. As the grand jurors noted, priests and other Catholic leaders targeted boys, girls and teens. Some victims were plied with alcohol and groped or molested, the report says. Others were orally, vaginally or anally raped, according to the grand jurors. Francis' conversations with victims over the years shaped the letter, which points out the need for urgent accountability both for those who committed the abuse and for those who covered it up -- bishops, in many cases, said Vatican spokesman Greg Burke. "This is about Ireland, this is about the United States and this is about Chile -- but not only. Pope Francis has written to the people of God and that means everyone," Burke said in an audio statement. "It's significant that the Pope calls abuse a crime, not only a sin, and that he asks for forgiveness but he acknowledges that no effort to repair the damage done will ever be sufficient for victims and survivors." Pope Francis's letter directly referred to the Pennsylvania report, which "detailed the experiences of at least 1,000 survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately 70 years." "Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away," the Pope wrote. "The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity." Looking ahead, the pontiff said the church was working on a "zero tolerance" policy on abuse and coverups. He added, "If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history." Bishopaccountability.org, a nonprofit advocacy group that tracks church abuse cases, says lawsuits have forced religious orders and dioceses to pay $3 billion in settlements. Crucial test for Francis' papacy The Pope has been under increasing pressure to comment on the nearly 900-page report amid a rapidly escalating sexual abuse crisis that has spread across several continents -- from Australia to Latin America. While the Vatican finally broke its silence on the report by releasing a damning statement on Thursday, Pope Francis notably made no mention of it during his public sermon in Rome on Sunday. The crisis presents a crucial test for Francis' papacy, which has stumbled badly at times to address sexual abuse among clergy. As Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, the Pope's top adviser on sexual abuse, said in a statement last week, "The clock is ticking for all of us in Church leadership." "Catholics have lost patience with us and civil society has lost confidence in us," he added. Juan Carlos Cruz, who experienced abuse in Chile and now lives in Philadelphia, said that while the abuse report is heartbreaking, he was encouraged by a change in vocabulary coming from the Pope and out of the Vatican. "There's new language," said Cruz, who spent a week in May talking to Francis about sex abuse. "They talk about crimes. They talk about a culture of death. They talk about a culture of abuse and cover-up. Before, they were omissions, sins, which is terrible." Francis' letter, he said, "talks about going to local justice, how bishops don't turn the perpetrators (over) to local justice because they're not obligated to do so, and that is a horrible crime." At the same time, Cruz is disheartened by what he said was the church's fight against measures to bring clergy to justice, he said. He cited specifically lobbying efforts to derail Pennsylvania state Rep. Mark Rozzi's proposal to suspend the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse. "They have to lobby to help survivors, not to fight them," he said. This weekend, the Pope will travel to Ireland, which also suffered a sex abuse scandal in 2009. Pope Francis is expected to meet with victims during his visit. All eyes will also be on whether the Pope publicly addresses the Pennsylvania report.<doc-sep>He said that neither Cardinal Parolin nor a host of other Vatican officials had replied, but that when he had brought up the subject with Cardinal McCarrick’s replacement in Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, “it was immediately clear to me that he was fully aware of it.” Ed McFadden, a spokesman for Cardinal Wuerl, disputed that account on Sunday. “In spite of what Archbishop Viganò’s memo indicates, Cardinal Wuerl did not receive any documentation or information during his time in Washington regarding any actions taken against Archbishop McCarrick,” Mr. McFadden said. Some survivors of clerical abuse called the allegations a distraction. “This is infighting between curia factions that are exploiting the abuse crisis and victims of clergy sexual abuse as leverage in the struggle for church power,” said Peter Isely, a survivor. “The sexual abuse crisis is not about whether a bishop is a liberal or a conservative. It is about protecting children.” The controversy over the allegations is expected to grow in coming days, especially as Francis has declined to deny it. Instead on Sunday’s flight, he blamed the media for promoting an “atmosphere of guilt” around suspected clerics and shared that until his visit he “had never heard” about Ireland’s notorious mother and baby homes, where children were ripped away from unwed mothers. He also sought to strike the same conciliatory tone that hundreds of thousands of faithful heard earlier in the day as he began a Mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin by explicitly asking forgiveness for the church’s sins and abuse. “Some members of the hierarchy didn’t own up to these painful situations,” he said at the Mass. “And kept silent.”<doc-sep>
Even if critics are correct that this letter was colored by vicious hierarchy infighting, it has exposed the extent of the vitriol surrounding the pope’s handling of sexual abuse. It’s not just the pope’s political enemies who have questioned his credibility. Francis is also facing a lack of trust among the faithful in the Church. [Catholics are desperate for tangible reforms on clergy sex Abuse] In recent years, few countries have been hit harder by scandals in the Catholic Church than Ireland. Clergy failed to report allegations of child sexual abuse against dozens of priests over decades, according to an independent audit. Historians and investigators have slowly uncovered years of abuses at so-called mother and baby homes, where unwed pregnant women were often sent against their will. The facts were particularly gruesome in the town of Tuam, where the remains of dead infants and fetuses were found in the sewer system next to a home run by nuns. So perhaps it was inevitable that Francis’s trip to Ireland, which marked a triennial global gathering of families in Dublin, was filled with grave reminders of Ireland’s troubled past. Protesters held vigils throughout the country for victims of clergy sex abuse. The pope met with a number of victims. And in his closing remarks, Francis apologized for “abuses of power, conscience, and sexual abuse,” and begged forgiveness for leaders in the Church who failed to report abuse or show compassion to victims. Significantly, he asked forgiveness from the single mothers who had been sent away to homes, and who were later condemned for wanting to be with their children. But the pope’s conciliatory tone was also mixed with defensiveness, and moments of what might be described as naiveté. According to The New York Times, he told reporters that he had never heard of Ireland’s mother and baby homes before this visit. He also rejected the notion that the Church needs a standing court to handle allegations against priests, and he blamed journalists for promoting an “atmosphere of guilt” towards clergy accused of abuse. He was most defensive about Viganò’s letter, telling reporters to “make your own judgment. … I believe the document speaks for itself.” The 11-page letter, which was published by the conservative outlet National Catholic Register, contains a number shocking allegations. * Viganò claims that a series of Vatican representatives in the U.S. knew about the allegations against McCarrick as early as two decades ago and reported them to the Holy See. He alleges that Pope Benedict XVI sanctioned McCarrick—although no sanctions were ever made public—and that Francis then disregarded those sanctions by making McCarrick his “trusted counselor.” After a series of unsubstantiated allegations against a number of prominent American clerics—some of which are openly speculative and contain conspiratorial language about bishops “[promoting] the LGBT agenda” and supporting pro-abortion politicians—Viganò calls on Francis to resign.