Pope Francis during a mass at St. Peter's Basilica on June 29, 2022. Mondadori Portfolio (Getty Images)
Pope Francis has acknowledged in an interview with Reuters that there are still countries where the Catholic Church is reluctant to implement measures to protect children from sexual abuse by the clergy.
However, he has forcefully warned: "the direction that [the Church] has taken is irreversible."
During an interview at the Vatican on July 2, the pope described the process toward "zero tolerance" that dioceses around the world began following after the
Boston Globe newspaper
uncover in 2002 decades of abuse and cover-up in the Boston episcopate.
Two decades in which, despite the ecclesiastical reforms to remedy the damage caused by this scourge, there are still victims around the world who complain about the mistreatment they continue to receive from the bishops, who do not recognize them as such or refuse to investigate last.
"There is resistance, but with each new step there is a greater awareness that this is the way forward," Francis said.
The pontificate of this Pope has been marked by anti-abuse reforms.
A year after his election, he created the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors to improve the protection of minors within Catholic communities around the world.
He also initiated trips and listened to victims.
In February 2019, he summoned the presidents of all the episcopal conferences of the world to a summit in Rome to deal with the issue of abuse and, at the end of the year, he promulgated two canonical laws that obliged Catholic bishops and hierarchs to open proceedings against any complaint of which they become aware.
He even lifted the pontifical secret so that the dioceses would deliver documentation of the canonical processes that the Church has internally judicialized to the civil authorities who requested it.
"We have to fight against all cases," Francis said.
And he added: “as a priest, I have to help people grow and save them.
If I abuse, I kill them.
This is terrible.
Zero tolerance".
In that same interview, the Pope has addressed other issues that fly over the Vatican: his state of health and the pontiff's opinion on the decision of the United States Supreme Court to repeal abortion as a constitutional right.
On the first, he has distanced the rumor mill that he suffers from cancer and that he will soon resign, as his predecessor Benedict XVI did, from the chair of Saint Peter.
He cracked a joke, claiming that his doctors "hadn't told him anything about it yet."
And on the second question, Francisco affirmed that he respected the court's decision, but that he had not thoroughly studied the decision from a legal point of view.
"I am telling you the truth.
I don't understand it from a technical point of view.
"I have to study it because I don't fully understand the sentence from 50 years ago and now I can't say if it has been done right or wrong from a judicial point of view," he replied to the journalist.
Despite this, he returned to express his opinion on abortion.
"Is it legitimate, is it right to take a human life to solve a problem?"
The Pope has compared the voluntary termination of pregnancy to "hiring a hitman."