(VATICAN CITY) — The Vatican on Wednesday clarified comments by Pope Francis about a case of what he called “sexual slavery” within a French congregation of nuns, saying he was referring to an abuse of power that was reflected in instances of sexual abuse.

Francis cited the case when responding to a question about the sexual abuse of nuns by clergy during a press conference Tuesday returning home from the United Arab Emirates. It was the pope’s first-ever public acknowledgment of the problem of priests and bishops sexually abusing nuns. He stressed that the Vatican had been confronting the issue for some time and vowed to do more.

Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Wednesday Francis “spoke of ‘sexual slavery’ to mean ‘manipulation’ or a type of abuse of power that is reflected in a sexual abuse.”

The Community of St. Jean admitted in 2013 that its late founder had behaved “in ways that went against chastity” with women in the order, according to the French Catholic newspaper La Croix. The Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI ultimately dissolved an offshoot of the congregation.

The issue has come to the fore amid the Catholic Church’s overall reckoning with the sexual abuse of minors and the #MeToo-inspired acknowledgement that adults can be victims of abuse whenever there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. In the past year, The Associated Press and other media have reported on cases of abused nuns in India, Africa, Europe and South America — evidence that the problem is by no means limited to a certain geographic area.

In November, the organization representing all the world’s female Catholic religious orders, the International Union of Superiors General, publicly denounced the “culture of silence and secrecy” that prevented nuns from speaking out and urged sisters to report abuse to their superiors and police. And just last week, the women’s magazine of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano identified the clerical culture of the all-powerful clergy as the culprit.

The magazine, “Women Church World,” noted that the scandal involves a corollary: nuns being forced to abort the priests’ children or bear children that the priests refuse to recognize.

Francis’ acknowledgement of the problem comes as he prepares to decide the fate of the disgraced American ex-cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, who is accused of abusing minors as well as adult seminarians. </s> A high-ranking monk has resigned his positions at the Buddhist Association of China after accusations of sexual assault and other misconduct made against him went viral on social media.

Xuecheng, who is also a member of China’s top political advisory body, stepped down as chairman and from other key roles after the State Administration for Religious Affairs launched an investigation earlier this month, the association said on Wednesday.

The 52-year-old, who is abbot of the well-known Longquan Temple on the outskirts of Beijing, was accused by two of the monastery’s former monks of coercing nuns into sex, building illegal temples and embezzling funds.

The claims were made in a 95-page document published by the pair on July 31 and promptly went viral on Chinese social media, fuelling support for the country’s #MeToo movement, which has been steadily gathering momentum.

Xuecheng denied the allegations in an online statement on August 1, saying they stemmed from “fabricated material” and “distorted facts”, but just a day later the religious affairs administration said it had started its own investigation.

The abbot’s resignation was announced at a Buddhist association meeting held to discuss measures to combat the commercialisation of Buddhism and Taoism, the group said in a statement.

Yanjue, abbot of Beijing’s Guangji Temple and deputy chairman of the association, will temporarily take over Xuecheng’s roles, it said.

Xuecheng did not respond to a request for comment.

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Shi Xianjia and Shi Xianqi, the two women who compiled the damning report, said the abbot sent suggestive messages to two female monks at Longquan Temple and made unwanted sexual advances towards at least four others. The document was laden with detail, including screenshots of text messages said to have been sent by Xuecheng.

Other chapters outlined how he had overseen the illegal construction of several buildings at the monastery and embezzled funds.

Despite its now high profile, Shi Xianjia told China Newsweek on August 2 that it was not her intention to make the report public.

“Because that would have a negative impact on Buddhism,” she said. “At first we just showed it to some masters but then it was shared widely [online]. The government has taken some action and I don’t dare to say more.”

Neither Shi Xianjia nor Shi Xianqi have made any public statements since.

Longquan Temple is known as China’s hi-tech temple for its use of artificial intelligence technology to aid enlightenment and the development of a miniature robotic monk. Many of its monks are former top academics from prominent universities.

Both Shi Xianjia and Shi Xianqi have doctorates in engineering from the prestigious Tsinghua University.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Buddhist association warned of the growing threat commercial activity poses towards monastic life.

“The commercialisation of Buddhism has disturbed the order of Buddhist activities, damaged the image and legal rights of Buddhism, and corrupted social values,” the statement said. </s> VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis admitted Wednesday that he made "grave errors" in judgment in Chile's sex abuse scandal and invited the victims he had discredited to Rome to beg their forgiveness.

In an extraordinary public letter, Francis also summoned all of Chile's bishops to the Vatican for an emergency meeting in the coming weeks to discuss the scandal, which has badly tarnished his reputation and that of the Chilean church.

The Vatican orders up such emergency visits only on rare occasions, when Vatican intervention is urgently required, such as when American bishops were summoned in 2002 after the clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in the U.S. and in 2010, when Irish bishops received a comprehensive Vatican dressing down for their botched handling of abuse cases.

Francis blamed a lack of "truthful and balanced information" for his missteps in judging the case of Bishop Juan Barros, a protegé of Chile's most notorious predator priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima. Francis strongly defended the bishop during his January visit to Chile despite accusations by victims that Barros had witnessed and ignored their abuse.

In Chile and during an airborne press conference returning to Rome, Francis accused the victims of "calumny" for pressing their case against Barros, demanded that they present "proof" of their claims and revealed that he had twice rejected Barros' resignation.

"I am convinced he is innocent," the pope insisted.

After causing an outcry, Francis sent the Vatican's most respected sex abuse investigator, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, to look into the scandal.

While his letter didn't reveal his ultimate conclusions about Barros, Francis made clear that he and the bishops have a lot of work to do to turn the church around.

In words that laid bare his simmering anger, Francis said they must "re-establish confidence in the church, confidence that was broken by our errors and sins, and heal the wounds that continue to bleed in Chilean society."

Karadima was a charismatic preacher who was removed from the ministry by the Vatican for sexually abusing minors and sentenced in 2011 to a lifetime of penance and prayer. Karadima had long been a darling of the Chilean hierarchy, and his victims have accused church leaders of covering up his crimes to protect the church's reputation.

Scicluna and his colleague, the Rev. Jordi Bertomeu, spent nearly two weeks in Chile and New York earlier this year interviewing Karadima's victims, who for years have denounced Barros' silence and were stunned by Francis' strong defense of him.

In his letter, Francis thanked the 64 people who testified and had the courage to bare the "wounds of their souls" for the sake of truth. After reading the 2,300-page dossier his envoys prepared, Francis affirmed that the victims "spoke in a stark way, without additives or sweeteners, of many crucified lives."

"I confess this caused me pain and shame," he wrote. </s> A French-Spanish nun has been brutally murdered in a village in the Central African Republic where she taught sewing to young girls, the Vatican said today.

Sister Ines Nieves Sancho, 77, was found beheaded early on Monday according to the Vatican News website, while a bishop in CAR said her throat had been slit.

'According to a local member of parliament, the murder could be linked to trafficking in human organs,' the site adds.

Village MP, Jean Marque Djokou said that the beheading is likely to be for human organ trafficking because it took place in Nola, a village known for murder recurrences and cases of organ trafficking.

Pope Francis paid tribute to the nun on Wednesday, describing the murder of a woman 'who gave her life for Jesus in the service of the poor' as 'barbaric'.

He called for those gathered in Saint Peter's Square for his weekly general audience to pray in silence for her.

'Her attackers broke into her room on the night between Sunday and Monday and took her to the centre she was running for the young girls, where they beheaded her,' Vatican News said.

A spokesman for the diocese of Burgos in Spain told AFP a bishop in the Central African Republic had described the state of the nun's body.

'They cut her neck to the point of killing her, but they didn't cut off her head completely,' he said. </s> ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis has for the first time publicly acknowledged the scandal of priests and bishops sexually abusing nuns, and says he is committed to doing more to fight the problem.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Francis said: “Should we do something more? Yes. Is there the will? Yes. But it’s a path that we have already begun.”

Francis noted that Pope Benedict XVI had taken action against a French order after some of its religious sisters had been reduced to “sexual slavery” at the hands of priests or their founder.

The issue has come to the forefront amid the Catholic Church’s overall reckoning with the sexual abuse of minors and the #MeToo-inspired acknowledgement that adults can be victims of abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. </s> VATICAN CITY, May 22 — A French-Spanish nun has been brutally murdered in a village in the Central African Republic where she taught sewing to young girls, the Vatican said today.

The 77-year old was found beheaded early Monday in the southwestern town of Nola according to the Vatican News website, while a bishop in CAR said her throat had been slit.

Pope Francis paid tribute to the nun today, describing the murder of a woman “who gave her life for Jesus in the service of the poor” as “barbaric”.

He called for those gathered in Saint Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience to pray in silence for her.

“Her attackers broke into her room on the night between Sunday and Monday and took her to the centre she was running for the young girls, where they beheaded her,” Vatican News said.

“According to a local member of parliament, the murder could be linked to trafficking in human organs,” the site adds.

A spokesman for the diocese of Burgos in Spain told AFP a bishop in the Central African Republic had described the state of the nun’s body.

“They cut her neck to the point of killing her, but they didn’t cut off her head completely,” he said.

The bishop said the motives for her murder were not known and “no terrorist organisation” has claimed responsibility for it, the spokesman added.

The bishop of the diocese of Berberati led the funeral for Ines Nieves Sancho on Tuesday, he said.

The vice general of the diocese of Berberati, Isaie Koffia, told AFP that the nun was murdered on Sunday afternoon.

“Strangers entered the back gate and dragged her into the bush behind the house to slaughter her. They did not take anything at all, they just came to kill her,” he added.

The nun belonged to the small congregation of the “Filles de Jesus”, or “Daughters of Jesus”, which is based in Massac-Seran in southwestern France.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez took to Twitter to express his “condolences and affection for Ines’ family” as well as for a Spanish missionary, Fernando Hernandez, who was killed on Saturday in Burkina Faso.

Hernandez, a 60-year-old member of the Salesian congregation in Bobo-Dioulasso, “was attacked by knives by a former employee who was fired two months ago,” according to the website of the Salesian congregation, salesianos.info.

He is the second Salesian to have been murdered in Burkina Faso this year. In February Antonio Cesar Fernandez, 72, was the victim of a “jihadist attack”, according to the website.

CAR has been struggling to recover from the bloodletting that erupted when former president Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown in 2013 by mainly-Muslim Seleka rebels.

Armed groups, typically claiming to defend an ethnic or religious group, control about 80 percent of the CAR, often fighting over access to the country’s mineral wealth.

Thousands have lost their lives, nearly 650,000 have fled their homes and another 575,000 have left the country, according to UN figures as of December last year. — AFP </s> VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has defrocked a 88-year-old Chilean priest who sexually abused teenage boys over a period of many years and is at the center of a wider abuse scandal that is still under investigation, the Vatican said on Friday.

Chilean priest Fernando Karadima is seen inside the Supreme Court building in Santiago, Chile, November 11, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Vera

Father Fernando Karadima was defrocked, or “reduced to the lay state” by the pope on Thursday, a move the Vatican called “exceptional” and done “for the good of the Church”.

Karadima, who lives in a home for the elderly in the Chilean capital Santiago, was notified on Friday.

He was found guilty in a Vatican investigation in 2011 and ordered to live a life of “prayer and penitence”, but was not defrocked at the time, the final years of the reign of former Pope Benedict. That meant he was still a priest, although he could not minister in public.

Karadima, who has always denied wrongdoing, escaped civilian justice because of the statute of limitations in the country.

Seven Chilean bishops have resigned since June after an investigation into an alleged cover-up of Karadima’s crimes, some of them former proteges of Karadima, who prepared them for the priesthood as young men in Santiago’s up-scale, conservative El Bosque neighborhood.

Three Chilean men who said they were abused by Karadima accused one, Juan Barros, the former bishop of Osorno, of having witnessed Karadima abuse them.

During a trip to Chile in January, the pope said he had no proof against Barros, believed he was innocent, and that accusations against him were “slander” until proven otherwise.

But days after returning to Rome, the pope, citing new information, sent sexual abuse investigator Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to Chile to speak to victims, witnesses and other Church members.

Scicluna produced a 2,300-page report accusing Chile’s bishops of “grave negligence” in investigating the allegations and said evidence of sex crimes had been destroyed.

In April, Francis, who is also grappling with sexual abuse crises in the United States, Germany and Australia, held four days of meetings in Rome with the three victims - Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Jose Andres Murillo.

“I have a knot in my stomach. I never thought I would see this day,” Cruz said in a tweet thanking the pope. “He (Karadima) is criminal who has ruined so many people’s lives with his abuse. I hope thousands of survivors feel a bit of the relief I feel today.”

Following the meeting with the victims, Francis summoned all of Chile’s 34 bishops to Rome in May and they offered their resignations en masse. Francis has so far accepted seven, and appointed “apostolic administrators” to run their dioceses. </s> UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Pope Francis admitted Tuesday that priests and bishops in the Catholic church had sexually abused nuns.

"There are some priests and also bishops who have done it," the pontiff said in response to a journalist's question on the abuse of nuns, speaking on the return flight from his trip to the United Arab Emirates. </s> Five monks have been assaulted at the Maria Immaculata church in Vienna's Floridsdorf district, with one suffering head injuries.

Two assailants, one armed with a pistol, beat a 68-year-old monk and then overwhelmed four others as they came to help, police spokesman Harald Sörös told Austria's APA news agency.

Police were notified three hours later and found the five clerics — the youngest aged 56 — tied up. They were all taken to hospital. The eldest had suffered head wounds, possibly from a metal bar.

A sixth man was also held in an adjacent office but not hurt, police said.

At the time, no church service was taking place.

Vienna's Catholic Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said he was "deeply disturbed" by the incident.

"Churches are places of peace and care; we're especially conscious of this at Christmastime … I pray for the rapid recovery of the victims and repentance by the perpetrators," he said.

Despite a large manhunt into Thursday evening, police have not yet found the assailants, who reportedly demanded cash and valuables from the monks. Söros ruled out terrorism as a motive for the attack.
The Abbott of the Montserrat Abbey, in Barcelona, Spain, apologizes for the sexual abuses that a monk did and that came to light two weeks ago.