“Let’s not look the other way”, says Monsignor Giuseppe Baturi, general secretary of the CEI, presiding over the prayer vigil for the victims of abuse by the clergy. The first Synodal Assembly of the Italian Church focuses on the protection of minors and the testimonies of the poor. On the eve of the Day of Prayer for the Victims, which will be held on 18 November, the approximately one thousand participants in the synodal journey gather in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to express, in the words of the president of the CEI, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, “shame and remorse”. To ask for “forgiveness” for “omissions and defaults” and to promise to create “welcoming and safe homes” for everyone, especially minors.
«Dearest brothers, in this event of prayer and dialogue which shows all the beauty of our ecclesial community, let us also look at those stains that disfigure its face», said the cardinal invoking «the Holy Trinity, communion of love, because those who have who have suffered violence can re-establish relationships of trust with the ecclesial community and experience new and authentic bonds”.
The assembly repeated together the invocation to God, “Father, source of life” to whom “with humility and humiliation” they handed over “the shame and remorse for the suffering caused to the smallest and most vulnerable of humanity” and, together they asked for forgiveness.
Finally, also the commitment to “break the chains of violence and guilt, to pierce our silences and to listen to the cries of pain of the victims of abuse and their families”. But also the promise to “accompany them by telling the truth to the end on the path of justice and reparation, so that even from the darkness of the earth, threatened by sin, but surrounded by the light of Easter, seeds of healing and rebirth sprout”.
At the end of the vigil, the delegates returned to their hotels to listen to seven concrete testimonies of experiences which, thanks to Caritas, are signs of hope and redemption for the people most in difficulty. From widespread acceptance to the recovery of the artistic talents of the most vulnerable people, from work reintegration paths to supportive neighbourhoods, concrete signs of hope also in view of the next Jubilee
