Pope Francis — "The Church must ask forgiveness for the scandals committed by its members."
The Church must ask forgiveness for the scandals committed by its members.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Pope Francis
"It hurts me when I see priests or nuns with the latest model car. You can’t do this."
"Hypocrisy is the devil's preferred language."
"Corruption is a cancer that destroys society."
"We must not be afraid to be a Church that is poor and for the poor."
"It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person."
About Pope Francis (born 1936)
First Latin American and Jesuit pope (2013-), who has steered the Catholic Church toward pastoral inclusion on LGBTQ pastoral care, divorced Catholics, and climate. Closely associated with Pope John XXIII (the Vatican II reformer pope) and Cardinal Walter Kasper (his theological ally on pastoral reform). For an intellectual contrast, see Cardinal Raymond Burke, American traditionalist cardinal, former head of the Vatican Apostolic Signatura — Burke is the public face of Catholic traditionalism that views Francis's pastoral approach as doctrinally dangerous — he has formally challenged Amoris Laetitia and other Francis reforms.
Details
Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization
Date: 2016
ReligiousVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: deepseek
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
True accountability means institutions — not just individuals — must own wrongdoing committed under their authority. The quote argues that collective moral responsibility requires the Church itself to publicly seek forgiveness rather than merely punish or distance itself from bad actors. It rejects deflecting misconduct as purely an individual problem, insisting the institution shares culpability and must actively work to repair broken trust with those it harmed.
Relevance to Pope Francis
Elected in 2013 as the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope, Francis built his reformist identity largely around confronting institutional corruption. He met personally with clergy abuse survivors, stripped Cardinal McCarrick of his rank, commissioned a landmark Vatican study on predatory priests, and issued formal apologies in Chile, Ireland, and Canada. His willingness to implicate the institution — not just perpetrators — marked a clear departure from previous papal stances.
The era
Francis's papacy unfolded amid the worst credibility crisis in modern Catholic history. Pennsylvania's 2018 grand jury documented abuse by over 300 priests. Australia's Royal Commission and France's CIASE report (2021) uncovered systemic cover-ups affecting hundreds of thousands. The #MeToo movement simultaneously amplified demands for institutional accountability across every sector, making the Church's reckoning with its own culture of concealment a defining moral challenge of the 2010s and 2020s.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].