Francis referred directly to the crisis convulsing his papacy on the fourth and final day of his Baltic pilgrimage, which coincided with the release of a devastating new report into decades of sex abuse and cover-up in Germany.
He told a gathering of young people in Estonia, considered one of the least religious countries in the world, that he knows many young people feel the church has nothing to offer them and does not understand their problems.
Those complaints recently poured into the Vatican through surveys commissioned ahead of a major meeting of bishops starting next week on how to better minister to young Catholics.
“We know – and you have told us – that many young people do not turn to us for anything because they don’t feel we have anything meaningful to say to them,” Francis told a gathering of Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox young people.
“They are outraged by sexual and economic scandals that do not meet with clear condemnation, by our unpreparedness to really appreciate the lives and sensibilities of the young, and simply by the passive role we assign them.”
He said the church wants to respond to those complaints transparently and honestly.
“We ourselves need to be converted,” he said. “We have to realise that in order to stand by your side we need to change many situations that, in the end, put you off.”
It was a public admission of the church’s…
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