Claudio Lavanga and Cassandra Vinograd report for NBC News:

Pope Francis begged forgiveness for the Church on Monday and cited the need for "reparation" as he met with victims who had suffered at the hands of Roman Catholic priests.

The pontiff invited six victims of abuse from Ireland, Germany and Britain to attend an early-morning private Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the residence next to St. Peter’s Basilica where he lives.

Francis called the abuse a “grave sin” decrying how it was hidden for “so much time” and “camouflaged with a complicity that cannot be explained.”

This news comes from Slog tipper Greg, who rightly points out that it comes after "a short 16 month delay [since Francis was made Pope] and mere decades (centuries) of abuse." I can't even begin to imagine what reparations for that kind of atrocity would look like.