Editor,

RE: "Pope Francis endorses tough measures against clerical child abuse” (The New Times, June 14).

What about child victims of genocidal clerics, and those who are maimed psychologically for life after seeing their entire families exterminated by or with the help of Catholic clergy?

Do they deserve no papal solicitude, and the Pontiff’s commitment to punish those who killed their loved ones and left them permanently scarred, or is clerical sex abuse of children in First World countries considered infinitely more deserving of papal opprobrium of those involved than the child victims of clerical involvement in genocide?

Rwandans need to keep this issue in the public eye; who knows, even the Catholic Church might still have a modicum of a sense of shame that might eventually push it to act against the genocidal clerics and lay officials in their midst, even if I won’t hold my breath too much expecting such an outcome.

Mwene Kalinda