Sex abuse 'chasm' says pope

(ANSA) - Vatican City, September 13 - Clerical sex abuse of minors shows a "spiritual chasm" that has "struck God dumb", Pope Francis said Thursday.
    Speaking to new bishops, Francis said "I recommend special attention for the clergy and seminarians.
    "We can't respond to the challenges that we have towards them without updating our processes of selection, accompaniment and evaluation".
    The pope went on: "But our answers will not have a future if they do not reach the spiritual chasm which, in many cases, has permitted scandalous weaknesses, and unless they expose the existential void that they have fuelled, unless they reveal how God has been struck dumb".
    The body of Christ has been "lacerated" by clerical sex-abuse scandals, the head of the US Bishops Conference Cardinal Daniel DiNardo said after US bishops had an audience with Francis Thursday.
    DiNardo, who is archbishop of Galveston-Houston, said "we are grateful to the Holy Father for having received us in audience.
    We shared with Pope Francis our situation in the United States - how the body of Christ is lacerated by the evil of sex abuse.
    "He listened very deeply, from the heart. It was a long, fruitful and good exchange".
    Talks focused on the "recent moral crisis in the American Catholic Church", he said, after a Pennsylvania report that over 1,000 minors were abused by 300 priests over 70 years.
    Francis, separately, has been urged to resign by a former US nuncio for allegedly covering up the sex crimes of former Washington archbishop Theodore McCarrick.
    A fresh front in the US sex crime affair opened Thursday as Francis ordered a probe into abuse by a West Virginia bishop.
    The pope accepted the resignation of Michael Bransfield, bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, and invited the archbishop of Baltimore, William Lori, to probe Bransfield's alleged abuse of adults.