HALIFAX — The Archbishop of Halifax says the Roman Catholic church is in crisis and there is an urgent need for change.
Archbishop Anthony Mancini condemns new reports of sexual abuse by priests, saying in a statement he is "devastated" and "ashamed" by the scandal.
Mancini is the latest Catholic leader to condemn the phenomenon of sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Catholic church, after a report from Pennsylvania last week detailed decades of abuse allegations from hundreds of children.
Mancini says the allegations are felt closely in Nova Scotia, where a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed this month against his Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth.
He calls on pastors to "denounce the evil which has so devastated so many innocent people," and says he empathizes with those priests whose Catholic convictions have been rattled.
He says he has wondered why abuse was covered up and the church's image prioritized over the victims, and decries what he calls "the systemic failure of leadership."
The archbishop asked members of the church to acknowledge the reality of sexual abuse and encouraged survivors to bring their stories to the authorities.
Pope Francis issued a 2,000-word statement on Monday addressing the report, writing that the church "abandoned" the children affected and asking for forgiveness.
Mancini notes he had himself said "enough is enough" in 2009 about the sex abuse scandal then facing the Nova Scotia church.
"Today it is evident that the evil goes deeper than imagined and the need for change even more urgent," he says in the statement, posted Monday.
"Our Catholic credibility and identity needs to be rebuilt; our authority must become service and not power; the gospel must be recovered from all that has tarnished it."
