Pope Francis Calls on Abusive Priests to Turn Themselves In

Pope Francis on Friday called on clerics who sexually abuse minors to hand themselves over to civil authorities and prepare their souls for eternal judgment, saying that the Vatican would remove the priests who prey like wolves on their flock and endanger the credibility of the whole church.

The pope’s remarks came in his traditional Christmas address to the bureaucracy that runs the Holy See, a speech that has become an annual excoriation of the careerism, sins and corruption that he says have infected the Catholic hierarchy.

“To those who abuse minors, I would say this: Convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis told the Roman curia, with cardinals in black cassocks and red skullcaps gathered around him in the frescoed Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

He denounced clerics “who abuse the vulnerable, taking advantage of their position and their power of persuasion,” adding: “They perform abominable acts yet continue to exercise their ministry as if nothing had happened. They have no fear of God or his judgment, but only of being found out and unmasked.”