BOSTON (WHDH) - Cardinal Sean O’Malley will meet with Boston-area priests Tuesday to discuss the re-emerging international scandal of child sex abuse in the church and reports detailing decades of apparent cover-ups.
The meeting is set to take place at St. Julia’s Catholic Church in Weston, where protesters are expected to gather.
This comes after Pope Francis visited Ireland over the weekend and addressed the crisis.
“We ask forgiveness for the times that, as a church, we did not show the survivors of whatever kind of abuse compassion,” he said.
Former Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has since called for the Pope’s resignation, saying he told Pope Francis about sexual abuse allegations made against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and he did nothing about it.
The Pope accepted McCarrick’s resignation as cardinal last month, after a U.S. church investigation determined that an accusation he had sexually abused a minor was credible.
Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney representing clergy sexual abuse survivors in Massachusetts, responded with a statement that reads: “Pope Francis should publicly reveal all information concerning himself and Cardinal McCarrick in order to set a moral example of transparency for all priests and the Catholic Church to follow. In doing so, maybe some clergy sexual abuse victims will be able to gain a degree of closure.”
O’Malley also came under fire for what he allegedly knew about the allegations against McCarrick.
Rev. Boniface Ramsey says he sent a letter to the Archdiocese of Boston’s Pastoral Center in June 2015, when the O’Malley was serving as President of the Pontificial Commission for the Protection of Minors, that detailed sex abuse allegations against McCarrick that took place over the span of three decades during his time as a bishop and archbishop in New Jersey.
In a statement, O’Malley claimed his priest secretary, Rev. Robert Kickham, responded to the letter, stressing that individual cases, “fell outside the mandate of the Commission.” He added that the letter was never brought to his attention.
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