The Philippine Online Chronicles

Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church held a service of repentance Tuesday, seeking atonement for thousands of child abuse cases in the past.

“Healing victims” should be a major concern, said Pope Benedict XVI, in a Vatican statement. He also seeks “profound renewal of the Church at every level.”

The service was part of a Vatican-sponsored conference at Gregorian University in Rome held to help bishops craft voluntary “guidelines” to improve the church's handling of abuse cases.

"We have sinned. We did not know how to listen to the pain of so many innocent ones," a bishop taking part in the conference told the AFP. "We are aware that our acts of reparation can never erase the unjust things we have done or soothe the searing wound of our consciousness."

The Vatican is presently under pressure to prioritize protecting victims of abuse rather than rising to defend alleged pedophile priests as it has done in the past.

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist and himself a Catholic priest, said that 95% of all abuse allegations were well founded, and that the church would do well to listen to victims instead of listening to offending priests.

Only one abuse survivor was invited to be a representative at the event: 64-year-old Marie Collins, who was abused at 13 by a hospital chaplain in Dublin.

“Apologizing for the actions of the abusive priests is not enough,” she said. “There must be acknowledgment and accountability for the harm and destruction that has been done to the life of victims and their families by the often deliberate cover up and mishandling of cases by their superiors.”

Cardinal William Levada, who heads the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office charged with enforcing church law, said that more than 4,000 cases of sexual abuse had been reported to his office in the past decade alone, signifying the need for a “truly multifaceted response.”