He praised Hungary by contrast, saying it had provided $5 million in direct assistance to repair Christian homes, schools and churches in Iraq and Syria.

"In recent months, the pope's prayer and blessing have given the Korean people great encouragement and hope on the path to peace," Moon wrote in L'Osservatore Romano.

One of Pope Francis' top advisers warned Friday that the Catholic Church risks increased police and government intervention if it doesn't address the clergy sex abuse scandal with system-wide reforms about the way power and sexuality are expressed.

A California man who says he was sexually abused by a priest decades ago is suing the Vatican, seeking the release of the names of all offenders within the church worldwide.

Among those participating in the protest were the hearing impaired victims of the notorious Antonio Provolo Institute in Verona, Italy, where deaf children were sodomized for years by Catholic priests and brothers.

Pope Francis has defrocked the Chilean priest at the center of the global sex abuse scandal rocking his papacy, invoking his "supreme" authority to stiffen a sentence originally handed down by a Vatican court in 2011.

Pope Francis' role in Argentina's most famous case of priestly sex abuse is coming under renewed scrutiny as he faces the greatest crisis of his papacy over the Catholic Church's troubled legacy of cover-up and allegations he himself sided with the accused.

Bransfield had been implicated in 2012 in an infamous Philadelphia priestly sex abuse case.

Tosatti said he told Vigano: “I think that if you want to say something, now is the moment.”

Cardinal Wuerl “categorically denied” ever being informed that his predecessor had been sanctioned for sexual misconduct.