Pope lowers expectations for next month's sex abuse summit

Pope Francis has sought to lower expectations from his big sex abuse prevention summit next month.

Francis told reporters returning from Panama on Sunday that he wants the February 21-24 meeting to essentially be a catechism class for bishops about sex abuse.

He said he wanted to sensitize church leaders around the globe to the pain of victims, instruct them how to investigate cases and develop general protocols for the entire hierarchy to use.

"Let me say that I've sensed somewhat inflated expectations," he said.

"We have to deflate the expectations to these three points, because the problem of abuse will continue. It's a human problem."
Francis in September summoned the presidents of bishops conferences for the summit after realising that church leaders in some parts of the world still didn't "get it."
Francis suggested that idea could figure into the general protocols under consideration, saying the protocols would discuss "what bishops, the metropolitans and the president of the conference must do."
He said when he is hearing the confession of a woman who has had an abortion, he urges her to speak to her child, "sing him the lullabies you didn't have a chance to sing to him."
''Here you have a path of reconciliation of the mother with the child, and with God. God will forgive."
He said he has refrained from picking sides in Venezuela's political debate because he is pastor to all Venezuelans. Francis said if he followed other countries in endorsing one leader over another
"I would place myself in a role that I don't know. It would be pastorally imprudent and I would do harm."