Alleged child sex abuse victim speaks out at Vatican

An Irish woman who detailed her own harrowing experience of child sexual abuse at the hands of a priest spoke out during a Vatican symposium on Tuesday, telling church officials that an apology was not enough.

“Those fingers that would abuse my body the night before were the next morning holding and offering me the sacred host,” Marie Collins told an audience at Gregorian University in Rome. “The hands that held the camera to photograph my exposed body, in the light of day were holding a prayer book when he came to hear my confession.”

Collins said “there must be acknowledgment and accountability for the harm and destruction that has been done to the life of victims,” calling for a strengthening of church policies to avoid what she called the “deliberate cover up and mishandling of cases.”

This week’s conference is meant to address ways clergy can better protect children from sexual predators.

On Monday, a top Roman Catholic official opened the conference by defending Pope Benedict XVI, arguing that he deserved thanks for his efforts.

Cardinal William Levada said Benedict, before becoming pope, enacted many of the reforms that followed the eruption of the church’s sex-abuse scandal a decade ago.

“But the pope has had to suffer attacks by the media over these past years in various parts of the world, when he should receive the gratitude of us all, in the church and outside it,” Levada said in his opening address to the conference.

Levada leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office charged with enforcing church law.

A wide-ranging child sex scandal, where priests have been accused of molesting young parishioners in the United States and in Europe, has since led to criminal charges in cases still pending before the courts.

Levada said more than 4,000 cases of sexual abuse had been reported to his office in the past decade, revealing the need for “a truly multifaceted response.”