Iran Press/Europe: According to CNN, Pope Francis told a crowd of young people in the Estonian capital Tallinn on Tuesday that he understood that many of them were "upset" by the sexual abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church and that the institution had lost credibility as a result.
Pope Francis said that young Catholics are "scandalized" by the Catholic Church's "monstrous" clergy sexual abuse crisis but adds that church officials who tried to handle abusive priests many years ago should not be judged by today's standards.
"Young people are scandalized by the hypocrisy of older people," Francis told journalists on Tuesday. "They are scandalized by war. They are scandalized by incongruity, they are scandalized by corruption, and as part of this corruption ... sexual abuse," Pope Francis noted.
"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," the Pope added.
"In fact, some of them expressly ask us to leave them alone, because they feel the Church's presence as bothersome or even irritating. They are upset 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," Pope Francis stated.
"There are accusations against the church," Francis continued. "We all know that. We know the statistics. I will not repeat them, but even if it was only one single priest to abuse a young girl or young boy this is monstrous because that man was chosen by God to bring that child to heaven."
The Pope added that the church "realized it had to fight" abuse in a "different way," and "in recent times (the abuse) has decreased."
Still, some experts say it's difficult to know if abuse has declined, because it typically takes years, if not decades, for survivors to report it.
It was his first reference to the sex abuse crisis since arriving in the Baltic region on Saturday, and came on the same day as bishops in Germany released a damning report into abuse by Catholic priests in the country over the past seven decades.
On Tuesday, Francis met with young people in Tallinn, Estonia, where he acknowledged the church's abuse scandal and said Catholic leaders need to be "converted" to address young people's concerns.
A senior Vatican official accused Pope Francis of knowning about allegations of sex abuse against a prominent cardinal and asked him to resign.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano claimed Pope Francis had known about allegations of sex abuse against a prominent cardinal, Theodore McCarrick in the US and sanctions imposed on him by Pope Benedict XVI over sexual misconduct were lifted under Francis.
American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, resigned last month over claims of sexual abuse against a 16-year-old boy. Francis accepted McCarrick's resignation as cardinal last month, after an internal US investigation found that an accusation he had sexually abused a minor was credible.
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