Sex Abuse Victims Describe Meeting With Pope

BOSTON -- Three local victims of clergy sex abuse spoke out Friday about their meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.

NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff reported that two women and three men from the Boston area spent 25 minutes sharing their stories with the pontiff.

VIDEO: Victims Discuss Meeting With Pope

"While he was holding my hand and (I was) telling him what it was like as an altar boy being abused while you are praying to God at a vulnerable age of 11 and 12 how that was not just sexual abuse but spiritual abuse," said abuse survivor Bernie McDaid.

McDaid told the pope about the late Rev. Joseph Birmingham. Officials in the Boston Archdiocese shuffled him around from Brighton to Gloucester despite numerous complaints. Olan Horne, another victim of Birmingham, brought pictures for the pope.

"They were pictures of me until I had been abused, and I asked him when he had an opportunity or if he was confused or he needed direction and he didn't know what he would do about a policy, to use these as a reminder and put them on his table or desk," he said.

"There's a connection now because the man made eye contact with survivors. You cannot deny that. We are real. We are not a number or a statistic," McDaid said.

Faith Johnston said that she didn't say a word in the closed-door meeting -- she just cried and prayed

"Just the way he looked at me, the way he spoke to me, I knew right away that he understood the pain I've carried around for seven or eight years," Johnson said.

They're hoping their words will move the pope to punish Cardinal Bernard Law, who's accused of covering up priest abuse when he was head of the Boston Archdiocese. He now enjoys a prominent perch in Rome.

On Thursday, Law's successor, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, gave the pope a book inscribed with the names of nearly 1,500 Boston area Catholics who say they were also abused.