VATICAN CITY — Cloistered inside the Vatican on Thursday, Roman Catholic Church leaders heard searing prerecorded video testimonials from abuse survivors, including one made pregnant three times by a priest who started abusing her at age 15, beat her and forced her to have abortions. “Victims need to be believed,” another person pleaded by video, urging bishops and other church leaders to work with civil authorities to hold sexually deviant clerics accountable. Outside the Vatican walls, clusters of people who have suffered abuse in the Catholic Church hovered near news conferences, gave hours’ worth of interviews, observed vigils and planned a Saturday march. Many expressed exasperation and little optimism that an extraordinary four-day meeting of bishops and other participants convened by Pope Francis to grapple with clerical child sexual abuse would lead to even basic changes.<doc-sep>Rome (CNN) Pope Francis began an unprecedented summit in Rome to confront the Catholic Church's clergy abuse scandal by saying that Catholics are not looking for simple condemnation, but concrete actions. "In the face of this scourge of sexual abuse perpetrated by men of the church to the detriment of minors, I thought I would summon you," the Pope told the nearly 200 Catholic leaders gathered in Vatican City, "so that all together we may lend an ear and listen to the Holy Spirit ... and to the cry of the small ones who are asking for justice." "The holy people of God are looking at us and expect from us not simple condemnations," Francis continued in his opening address, "but concrete and effective measures to put in place. We need to be concrete." For the first time in Catholic history, the almost 200 global church leaders are gathering at the Vatican to address the crisis. The four-day summit, convened by the Pope last September, will include two speeches by Francis, talks outlining best practices, small group discussions among bishops and a penitential ceremony involving abuse survivors. Pope Francis bows his head in prayer during the opening of the summit on Thursday. Pope outlines summit roadmap The Pope then said that he had made a list of 21 "reflection points" that were handed out to the assembly of church leaders. Among the points was a proposal to raise the minimum age for marriage to 16 years old. Current canon law in the Catholic Church has the minimum age as 14 for females and 16 for males. Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, an organizer of the summit in Rome, said that conferences of bishops in individual countries have the power to raise the age, but that the Pope wants to make the change part of universal canon law. Here are the "reflection points" the Pope handed out today to Catholic leaders at the summit on clergy sex abuse pic.twitter.com/Pct0YOpIoD — Daniel Burke (@BurkeCNN) February 21, 2019 Scicluna, the church's top sex abuse investigator, called the guidelines a "roadmap for our discussion," adding that "they are very, very concrete." The Pope's "reflection points" include preparing a "practical handbook" of guidelines for handling abuse cases when accusations emerge. Also included are instructions to inform civil authorities and church officials whenever an accusation is made, establishing provisions to include non-clergy experts in investigations, as well as formulating "mandatory codes of conduct" for all church clergy, personnel and volunteers "to outline appropriate boundaries in personal relationships." More controversially, the Pope proposed that dioceses and Catholic organizations around the world not publish lists of clergy accused of abuse before a preliminary investigation and "definitive" condemnation have occurred. "The principle of natural and canon law of presumption of innocence must be also be safeguarded until the guilt of the accused is proven," the Pope said in the "reflection points." Abuse survivors often insist that the public is notified whenever an accusation is made, both to protect the community and to encourage other potential victims to come forward. JUST WATCHED Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is a global crisis Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is a global crisis 03:05 "This seems to say that if a priest or a nun or deacon gets accused they don't tell the parish until the accusation is 'proven,'" said Tim Lennon, of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, who is in Rome participating in vigils with other clergy abuse victims. "Well, who proves this? The police or the bishops? We've seen for 35 years that bishops often cover up, so no one trusts that they are going to be good arbiters of guilt and innocence." As the sun set over St. Peter's Basilica, about 20 abuse survivors gathered near the Vatican, where they called on the church to adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards clergy who abuse children and bishops who cover up the crimes. Some held flags from their home countries and wiped tears from bloodshot eyes. 'A life destroyed': Survivors speak After the Pope spoke, he and the assembled church leaders watched harrowing video testimonies from several victims of clergy sexual abuse. One woman, who was not named, spoke of a priest who began sexually abusing her when she was 15. "This lasted for 13 years," the woman said. "I got pregnant three times and he made me have an abortion three times, quite simply because he did not want to use condoms or contraceptives." The woman said that the priest would humiliate her, and beat her if she refused to have sex with him. "I feel I have a life destroyed," she said. Another survivor of clergy sexual abuse, identified as 53-year-old priest, said another priest molested him when he was a teenager. When he reported the abuse to the local bishop, who he did not name, the bishop "attacked me without trying to understand me." The priest said that neither the bishop nor the priest he says abused him have answered his letters, even after eight years of waiting. The last survivor of clergy sexual abuse to speak to the Pope and church leaders said that he had been sexually molested "over a hundred times," an experience that has led to traumas and flashbacks. When he told church leaders about the abuse, the man said, they "covered (up for) the perpetrators and that kills me sometimes." "I'll request that the bishops get their act clear because this is one of the time bombs happening in the church of Asia." The Rev. Hans Zollner, one of the summit's organizers, said at a news conference Thursday that he deliberately selected clergy sexual abuse victims from every continent to speak about their experience to make clear that "this is not a North American or Central European problem." The "searing, brutal, honest" testimonies, Zollner said, were followed by two minutes of silence in Paul VI Hall in Vatican City, where the summit is being held. "You could hear, you could see, you could feel that people were in tune with what had been read (and) what had been said," Zollner said. But differences soon emerged among the bishops in their small group discussions, said Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Australia. "It was immediately evident in the discussion with bishops from Africa and Asia saying, 'Well why are we talking about sexual abuse? Because abuse in my country takes many forms: child labor, child soldiers. Why this obsession with sexual abuse?'" Reaching consensus on how to approach clergy abuse "is going to be one of the big challenges of the meeting," Coleridge said at the news conference. A cardinal holds the liturgy booklet during the opening of the Vatican meeting. Crucial moment for church After the Pope spoke on Thursday morning, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila in the Philippines, gave a spiritual talk centered on healing wounds and providing justice for survivors of sexual abuse. "The abuse of minors by ordained ministers has inflicted wounds not only on the victims, but also on their families, the clergy, the church, the wider society, the perpetrators themselves and the bishops," Tagle said. "But it is also true, we humbly and sorrowfully admit, that wounds have been inflicted by us bishops on the victims and in fact the entire body of Christ. "Our lack of response to the suffering of victims," Tagle continued, "even to the point of rejecting them and covering up the scandal to protect perpetrators and the institution has injured our people, leaving a deep wound in the relationship with those we are sent to serve." On Wednesday, summit organizers met with abuse survivors from around the world, saying afterward that the meeting will help them "better understand the gravity and urgency of the difficulties" church leaders will face during the four-day summit. The meeting centers around themes: responsibility on Thursday, accountability on Friday and transparency on Saturday. On Sunday, more than 100 bishops from around the world, as well as other Catholic leaders, will gather for Mass in Sala Regia, an ornate hall in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace.<doc-sep>A series of scandals will be looming large in the eyes of church leaders and Vatican watchers alike when a highly anticipated conference on child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church begins on Thursday. The meeting was called to address decades of abuse disclosures that have rattled the church, eroded trust in its leadership and driven away some of the faithful. The gathering is intended to be a moment to realign and move forward, and before it began, in what many saw as a significant step, the Vatican expelled Theodore E. McCarrick, a former cardinal and archbishop of Washington, from the priesthood. It was the first time any cardinal has been defrocked for sexual abuse. But while the church expressed hope that the four-day meeting of 190 participants from across the world, including Pope Francis, would mark a turning point, there is a risk that fresh controversies may overshadow it.<doc-sep>
Francis has also begun taking bishops to task. After an investigation by Monsignor Scicluna found “a culture of abuse” in Chile, the entire bishops’ conference of that country came to the Vatican to tender their resignations. Francis accepted those of at least seven bishops. In 2002, after the abuse scandal erupted in Boston, U.S. bishops adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which requires a diocese to report allegations of a crime to civil authorities and includes a one-strike-you’re-out policy, in which priests are removed from the ministry if they are found to have harmed minors. Vatican officials have argued that this policy can’t be applied universally, since clerics would be put at risk in authoritarian regimes or places where the clergy are targets of killings. For now, the rhetoric has focused more on calling attention to the crisis. With the meeting this week, “the Holy Father wants to make very clear to the bishops around the world … that each one of them has to claim responsibility and ownership for this problem,” Cardinal Cupich said. He added that there would be an effort “to close whatever loopholes” exist so that bishops understand their duties, and that genuine progress would be required of them. But some abuse victims say the structure of the Church isn’t so much the problem; the mentality is. “These are crimes, not sins,” said Barbara Dorris, a victim of clerical sexual abuse who is now an activist with Voices of Faith, a group that seeks to have a greater role for women inside the Catholic Church. “They already have a structure. Church officials need to be held accountable to the same standards everyone else is.” Does the Vatican Hierarchy Understand What’s at Stake? Yes and no. The Vatican is a hermetic world, the ultimate realm of power politics, dominated by Italians who have been reluctant to see this problem as a global crisis rather than as a scandal to be kept quiet and handled internally, if at all. Ahead of this week’s meeting, it created a website that brings together Church documents on the issue of abuse, including statements and papal teachings, as well as relevant passages in canon law. It’s the first time the Vatican has ever endeavored to compile all the material in one place. But there are words, and there are actions. In 2017, Marie Collins, an Irish survivor of sexual abuse, resigned in frustration from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which the pope established in 2015, to protest that Francis had rejected the commission’s recommendation to create a tribunal for bishops inside the Vatican. “As long as an obsession with secrecy and protection of reputation remains at the core of the Church in those who have the means to make the necessary changes, it will not happen,” Collins wrote me in an email.