The five victims of
child sexual abuse who met with Pope Francis on Sunday morning included
some who had been abused by relatives or educators, not Roman Catholic
clergy — a deliberate decision made to show that the church is taking a
“larger perspective” on the problem of sexual abuse, said the Rev.
Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman.
Victims of clergy sex
abuse and their advocates saw something less benign at work: a subtle
but unmistakable effort by the Vatican to shift the terms of the debate,
to show “that it’s not always the church’s fault,” as Marci A.
Hamilton, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at
Yeshiva University who has represented hundreds of victims of clerical
sexual abuse, put it.