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.
