Pope summons bishops to address abuse
The call for the February meeting at the Vatican is believed to be the first of its kind.
Pope Francis is summoning the presidents of every bishops’ conference around the world for a February summit to discuss preventing clergy sexual abuse and protecting children.
Francis’s key cardinal advisers announced the decision September 12, a day before Francis met with U.S. church leaders in the wake of the latest accusations in the Catholic Church’s decades-long sexual abuse and cover-up scandal.
The call for the February 21–24 meeting at the Vatican is believed to be the first of its kind and signals a realization at the highest levels of the church that clergy sexual abuse is a global problem and not restricted to the Anglo-Saxon world, as many church leaders have long tried to insist.
