Pope Francis thanks journalists for exposing Church sexual abuse scandals

• Francis said journalists had a mission "to explain the world, to make it less obscure."
• He added that reporters needed to "escape the tyranny" of always being online. "Not everything can be told through email, the phone, or a screen," Francis said.

Context: Initial reports of sexual abuse within the Church appeared in 2002, when the Boston Globe wrote a series of articles exposing a pattern of clergy abuse.

• On Monday, France's Catholic Church said it would financially compensate those who were abused by French clergy and other church officials.
• In October, an independent investigation found that French clerics had sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years.