The archbishop said his team's pastoral mission includes providing "concrete technical and legal assistance to the dioceses in Chile so they may give adequate responses to each case of sexual abuse of minors committed by clergy or religious."

The multinational initiative, End Clergy Abuse, was announced Thursday at a press conference in Geneva. One after another, more than a dozen members held up their national flags and denounced an individual bishop who had mishandled a case, from the Americas to Africa and Europe in between.

With the children seated around him in the atrium of the Vatican audience hall, Pope Francis answered their questions about his childhood, his school, his vocation and the standard question children ask him, "How did you feel when you were chosen pope?"

Bishop Barros has been at the center of Chile's growing scandal ever since Francis appointed him bishop of Osorno in 2015 over the objections of the local faithful, his own sex abuse prevention advisers and some of Chile's other bishops.

The Vatican said in a statement Saturday that Monsignor Carlo Capella, who was the No. 4 official in its Washington embassy, would face a trial starting June 22.

Pope Francis said the challenge is “to find ways of ensuring the immense supply of energy required to meet the needs of all, while developing means of using natural resources that avoid creating environmental imbalances.”