Senior members of France’s Roman Catholic hierarchy knelt in a show of penance at the shrine of Lourdes on Saturday, a day after bishops accepted the church’s responsibility for decades of child abuse, reports The Guardian.
But some of the survivors of the abuse – and lay members supporting them – said they were still waiting for details of compensation and of a comprehensive reform of the church.
In Lourdes, a place of pilgrimage for Christians, roughly 120 archbishops, bishops and laymen gathered at the unveiling of a photo showing a sculpture representing the head of a weeping child.
At the request of the victims, the clerics did not wear their religious clothing for the ceremony.
The wall featuring the photograph will serve as a “place of memory” for the victims. The photo itself was taken by one of the victims of abuse, and the suffering he had endured was detailed in a passage read out by another survivor.