Pope Francis said the church had delayed action and urged a culture of care at present and in the future as he published a strongly-worded letter on the subject.
He arrives in Ireland this weekend, a country where the Catholic church has been rocked by a series of sex abuse scandals involving members of religious orders.
Margaret McGuckin, leader of SAVIA (Survivors & Victims of Institutional Abuse), a charity set up to give a voice to victims of historic abuse in Northern Ireland, said: “It is a last-ditch attempt to see what he can do.
“It is too little too late, nothing will change.”
A Pennsylvania grand jury report published recently in the US found more than 300 priests abused more than 1,000 children.
The Pope expressed “shame and repentance”.
He added: “We acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realising the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives.
“We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”
The Pope is due to spend two days visiting Dublin and the Knock shrine in the West of Ireland this weekend.
He will meet Ireland’s President Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, address a session of the World Meeting of Families and celebrate mass for half a million people at Phoenix Park.
Referring to the US abuse report, the pontiff noted that at…
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