Dudley Althaus and Deborah Ball of the Wall Street Journal report Pope Francis Calls for Protection of Migrant Children, and calls for improvements to conditions in their home countries.
Pope Francis is urging the U.S. and other governments to protect the migrant children flocking by the thousands across the Rio Grande and to rectify often appalling conditions at home that have set them on the road.
"I must call attention to the tens of thousands of children who migrate alone, unaccompanied, to escape poverty and violence," Pope Francis said in a letter, read at a migration conference in Mexico City sponsored by the Vatican and the Mexican government. The letter says youngsters cross the U.S. border "in extreme conditions, in a hopeful search that most of the time is in vain."
Child migrants must be especially cared for, Pope Francis said. But governments must improve economic and security conditions that guarantee the youths viable futures in their homelands.
NBC News reports
Pope Says Children at U.S. Border Must Be 'Welcomed and Protected.'
Pope Francis says migrants around the world are subjected to “racist and xenophobic attitudes” and he wants the tens of thousands of Central American children crossing the border into the United States to be “welcomed and protected.”
In a letter Monday to a Vatican conference in Mexico City on human migration and development, the pontiff said that immigration has become a hallmark of modern society. “Many people forced to emigrate suffer, and often, die tragically,” Francis said, according to a Vatican Radio translation. “Many of their rights are violated
Lauren Raab of the The LA Times Did Pope Francis really say 2% of Catholic clergy are pedophiles? Eugenio Scalfari reported in in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, that the Pope said this in a private interview. A Vatican spokesperson said it may be a misquote.
If 2% of Roman Catholic priests are pedophiles, that would be more than 8,000 priests
An interview that credits Pope Francis as saying about 2% of Roman Catholic clerics are pedophiles stirred controversy Sunday, as the Vatican sought to raise questions about the article's accuracy and others called on the pope to take more action on the issue. ...
The interview by Eugenio Scalfari, published Sunday, quotes the pope as calling the rash of sex abuse scandals “a leprosy in our home” and saying the pedophiles include “priests and even bishops and cardinals,” according to a CBS News translation. “And others, even more numerous, know about it but keep quiet, they punish without saying the reason why. I find this state of things untenable and it is my intention to confront it with the severity it requires.” ...
Meanwhile, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said the “real percentage of predator priests” is much higher than 2% and called on the pope to defrock clerics who participate in cover-ups.
Our hearts and prayers go out to the children making the long and dangerous trip from Central America in the remote hope they will be allowed to stay. I do not know what the solution to this crisis might be, but we do want everyone to be safe and well taken taken care of in their transit to where ever they are going.