VATICAN (CNS): When presented with an accusation that a priest has sexually abused a child, “whether it’s criminal or malicious complicity and a code of silence or whether it is denial” on a very human level, such reactions are no longer tolerable, Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, the Vatican’s top investigator of abuse cases said during a news conference on February 18.
 

VATICAN (CNS): Pope Francis confirmed the removal from the priesthood of Theodore McCarrick, the 88-year-old former cardinal and archbishop of Washington. The Vatican announced the decision on February 16, saying he was found guilty of “solicitation in the sacrament of confession and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”
 

VATICAN (CNS): “Recent events in the Church have us all focused on the urgent need for a clear response on the part of the Church for the sexual abuse of minors” and vulnerable adults, said Sean Cardinal O’Malley, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on September 9.
 

DUBLIN (CNS):  “We ask forgiveness for the abuse in Ireland, abuse of power and of conscience, sexual abuse” Pope Francis prayed before celebrating the concluding Mass of the World Meeting of Families Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, on August 26. 
 
“In a special way, we ask forgiveness for all the abuse committed in the different institutions run by religious men and religious women and other members of the Church.”
 

VATICAN CITY (CNS): “The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced,” Pope Francis said in an August 20 letter addressed “to the people of God.” 
 
“But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence them,” he said.