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		</div><p>Pope Francis urged Catholic bishops to dream of a future free of the mistakes of the past and hit out at clericalism as he opened a global church leadership meeting amid renewed outrage over the priestly sex abuse and cover-up scandal.</p>
<p>Yet close to the Vatican’s synod hall, about two dozen abuse survivors staged a sit-in, demanding their cause be taken up at the meeting and voicing outrage that some of the delegates had covered up for abusive priests.</p>
<p>“Make ‘Zero Tolerance’ Real,” read one protest sign.</p>
<figure id="attachment_118618" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-118618" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/988444EF-F9A2-479A-87EC-319DEC075EA4.jpeg"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/988444EF-F9A2-479A-87EC-319DEC075EA4.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" class="size-full wp-image-118618" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-118618" class="wp-caption-text">Chinese bishops Yang Xiaoting, right, and Guo Jincai attended the opening of the15th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops</figcaption></figure>
<p>Francis welcomed more than 250 priests, bishops and cardinals, as well as 34 young Catholics, to a month-long meeting on ministering to future generations, urging young and old to listen to one another without prejudice.</p>
<p>He prayed for God’s help to ensure the church “does not allow itself, from one generation to the next, to be extinguished or crushed by the prophets of doom and misfortune, by our own shortcomings, mistakes and sins”.</p>
<p>The October 3-28 synod comes amid new revelations about decades of sexual misconduct by priests and cover-ups in the US, Chile, Germany and elsewhere.</p>
<blockquote><p>Clericalism is a perversion and is the root of many evils in the church,</p></blockquote>
<p>It has been a disastrous year for the pope on the abuse front, after he botched a prominent cover-up scandal in Chile before changing course. More recently, he has been accused of rehabilitating an American ex-cardinal who pressured seminarians to sleep with him.</p>
<p>Those cases, coupled with the release of devastating studies about decades of abuses and cover-ups in Pennsylvania and Germany that predated his papacy, have fuelled doubts about his oft-stated pledge of having “zero tolerance” for that, since implicated bishops remain in place.</p>
<p><a href="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/8EBC192A-4418-4C7A-BEA2-C96CA3031ED2.jpeg"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/8EBC192A-4418-4C7A-BEA2-C96CA3031ED2.jpeg" alt="" width="1091" height="406" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118619" /></a></p>
<p>“Pope Francis talks about ‘zero tolerance,’ and that bishops who cover-up should be removed and put on trial,” said Alessandro Battaglia, who was 15 when he was abused by a Milan-area priest who last month was convicted and sentenced to over six years in prison.</p>
<p>The current archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, gave evidence at the trial of Mauro Galli that he had transferred Galli to another parish rather than report him to police or keep him away from other potential victims, as Mr Battaglia’s family had requested.</p>
<p>Despite publicity about the case, Francis named Mr Delpini archbishop of Milan in July and named him a papal delegate at the synod.</p>
<p>“What is this ‘zero tolerance’?” Mr Battaglia asked at the protest Wednesday.<br />
“If he wants to give a sign of zero tolerance and coherence and credibility, remove him (Delpini).”</p>
<p>Francis did not refer directly to the abuse scandal in his homily at mass or later Wednesday in his opening speech to the synod.</p>
<p><a href="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/8EBC192A-4418-4C7A-BEA2-C96CA3031ED2.jpeg"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/8EBC192A-4418-4C7A-BEA2-C96CA3031ED2.jpeg" alt="" width="1091" height="406" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-118619" /></a></p>
<p>He did, however, call for an end to the “scourge of clericalism”, the culture that puts clergy on a pedestal and unaccountable to their flocks, which Francis has blamed for the scandal.<br />
“Clericalism is a perversion and is the root of many evils in the church,” he told the delegates.</p>
<p>“We must humbly ask forgiveness for this and above all create the conditions so that it is not repeated.”<br />
Francis got emotional during his homily when he welcomed two Chinese bishops to the gathering, the first time Chinese bishops have attended a Vatican synod.</p>
<p>That was made possible thanks to a landmark agreement with Beijing over bishop nominations that unified the Chinese Catholic leadership for the first time in decades.</p>
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