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Pope Francis: "childhood extinction"
Photo: Vatican Pool / Getty Images
Pope Francis has described child abuse in an audience as "a kind of psychological murder".
In many cases, the acts would amount to "childhood extinction".
The Pope received a team from the Meter Association in the Vatican on Saturday, which is committed to preventing abuse.
Francis said the acts were perpetrated in schools, in sports, in recreational facilities and religious communities as well as among individuals and had to be consistently exposed.
“Even today we see how often the first reaction in families is to cover up everything.
And in other institutions, including in the church, this is still common, "said the head of the Catholic Church according to the" Vatican News ".
"Old habit of hushing up"
Francis emphasized: "We have to deal with this old habit of covering up and overcome it."
The Catholic Church itself is repeatedly criticized because cases of child abuse within its own ranks had been concealed.
The institution is also accused of not dealing with dignitaries quickly enough.
This is also suggested by a current German case: an expert report on cases of abuse in the Archdiocese of Cologne from 1975 to 2018 had incriminated Archbishop Stefan Heße from Hamburg.
He is therefore responsible for mistakes in dealing with perpetrators and victims.
In a total of eleven cases, he is said to have acted improperly and neglected procedures prescribed by canonical law.
Pope Francis then granted Heße a break.
jpz / dpa