Pope Francis sent a message, dated October 21 and released November 4, to participants in “Promoting child safeguarding in the time of Covid-19 and beyond,” a conference organized by the Pope John XXIII Community with Italian Catholic Action and the Italian Sport Center.

The “process of conversion urgently requires renewed formation of all those who have educational responsibilities and who work in environments with minors, in the Church, in society, and in the family,” the Pope wrote. “Only in this way will it be possible to eradicate the culture of death that every form of abuse, whether sexual, of conscience or of power, brings with it.”

“If abuse is an act of betrayal of trust, which condemns those who suffer it to death and causes deep fissures in the context in which it takes place,” he added, “prevention must be a permanent process of promotion of an ever renewed and certain reliability towards life and the future, on which minors must be able to count.”