For more than 25 years, the U.S. Catholic Church has been dealing with the horror of widespread clergy sex crimes and cover-ups. Yet U.S. abuse survivors have never received official acknowledgment of their pain by any federal official.
Renewed interest in the prayer developed in the fall of 2018 in the wake of concerns about church unity and new revelations of the sexual abuse of children by clergy.
Pope Francis has appointed Juan Carlos Cruz—a well-known Chilean victim of abuse, international advocate for survivors of clerical abuse and a gay man—to the Pontifical Council for the Protection of Minors.