Pope holds surprise meeting with clergy abuse victims

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pope Benedict held emotional meetings on Thursday with people who were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests in what was believed to be the first encounter between a pope and victims of clergy abuse.

The Vatican said Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the current archbishop of Boston, accompanied the group to the session, which was not made public until after it had taken place.

"They prayed with the Holy Father, who afterward listened to their personal accounts and offered them words of encouragement and hope," a Vatican statement said.

"His holiness assured them of his prayers for their intentions, for their families and for all victims of sexual abuse," it said.

The pope met with the victims on Thursday afternoon in the chapel of the Vatican Embassy in Washington, where the pope is on the third day of his first visit to the United States as pontiff.

Benedict's trip to Washington and New York this week marks the first U.S. visit by a pontiff since a wave of sex abuse scandals began in 2002, provoking lawsuits that have forced dioceses to pay more than $2 billion in settlements.

The United States' pedophile priest scandal first erupted in Boston, where many leaders of the archdiocese were found to have moved priests who abused minors to new parishes instead of defrocking them or reporting them to authorities.

O'Malley replaced Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law, who had to resign in December 2002.

A Vatican source said the pope had met with about half a dozen victims.

Chief Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said there was a lot of emotion in the room during the 25-minute meeting and that some victims cried. He said they included men and women and that each spoke privately with the pope, one at a time.

Benedict spoke "affectionate words" to the group and Cardinal O'Malley gave the pope a notebook with the names of about 1,000 sexual abuse victims in the Boston archdiocese, so that the pope could pray for all of them, Lombardi said.

Lombardi said there were silent prayers, then public prayers guided by the cardinal and then the pope spoke to members of the group.

Before the meeting, attendees Bernie McDaid and Olan Horne, who were sexually abused as children, spoke to National Public Radio. Both men voiced skepticism about the meeting.

"I am not kowtowing. I will not kiss his ring," Horne told the U.S. public radio network. "If we walk in and we're served a large plate of platitude, I can be guaranteeing you that I will be the first person to say that this man does lack the moral authority to manage the Catholic Church. I expect more than an apology when I leave that room."

The attendees were not immediately available after the meeting.

(Writing by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

(For more on religion, see the Reuters religion blog FaithWorld at blogs.reuters.com/faithworld)