Pope meets with child protection board as events outside Vatican show abuse scandal isn’t going away

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has met with his child protection board as new developments outside the Vatican underscored that the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal isn’t going away anytime soon. The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is expected to soon release the first-ever audit of safeguarding procedures and policies church-wide. But as that report is being compiled, church officials in Switzerland reported a surge in victims coming forward since the September publication of a bombshell report that found over 1,000 cases of abuse since the mid-20th century in a country with a relatively small Catholic population. And in Sicily, a criminal court handed down an important verdict this week against a priest whom the Vatican exonerated on a technicality.