By RACHEL ZOLL

Pope Francis praised American bishops on Wednesday for their “generous commitment” to helping victims of clergy sex abuse, drawing an angry rebuke from advocates who said the bishops acted only under the threat of hundreds of lawsuits.

Addressing church leaders in a prayer service at the Washington cathedral, Francis said they had faced the crisis “without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

“I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we, too, are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” the pope said to loud applause from the bishops.

But the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said the bishops had displayed “cowardice and callousness” in response to victims who came forward and they “hide behind expensive lawyers and public relations professionals” instead of fully confronting the scope of the problem within the church. Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy group that collects records on abusive priests from around the world, called the pope’s remarks “distressing and quite off-base.”

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, defended Francis’ comments, saying it was appropriate to recognize the bishops’ reforms in response to the scandal given the U.S. church is now a model for other countries to follow.

“I am not surprised there are critics that are not happy, but this is not the first time,” he said.

He said the pope cannot simply keep beating down the bishops but must offer them words of encouragement.

The abuse crisis erupted in 2002 with the case of one pedophile priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, then spread nationwide. The revelations in Boston, about guilty priests kept in ministry without any warning to parents or police, persuaded thousands of people across the country to come forward with abuse claims, prompted grand jury investigations in several states and compelled the bishops to take an inventory of how every American diocese had dealt with perpetrators and victims going back decades.

Under enormous public pressure, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pledged to oust any guilty clergy from church work or from the priesthood. Hundreds of priests were removed from ministry, and bishops made multimillion-dollar settlements with victims. Dioceses conducted background checks of priests and workers, trained them to identify abusive behavior and put in place other safeguards for children.

However, the scandal persists. In 2011, a grand jury accused the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, then led by Cardinal Justin Rigali, of keeping about three dozen guilty priests in parishes. Rigali’s successor, Archbishop Charles Chaput, has worked to restore trust in the archdiocese, which Francis will visit this weekend.

Three other dioceses — Gallup, New Mexico; Milwaukee; and St. Paul and Minneapolis — are in bankruptcy court trying to limit settlements with victims. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is being prosecuted on charges of failing to protect children from a now-convicted priest, and its archbishop, John Nienstedt, and one of his auxiliary bishops stepped down this year.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the bishops’ conference, said the bishops understood that “we continue to need to do more in recognizing the pain” of victims and said he saw the pope’s comments as encouragement to continue reaching out to them.

Francis announced plans in June to create a tribunal to hear cases of abuse of office by bishops over failures in handling sex abuse cases. But there are no signs it will be set up any time soon.

While the tribunal marks the biggest step taken to address accountability among bishops who covered up for abuse, Francis also has a history of sounding tone-deaf about the problem. He once complained the church had been unfairly singled out for criticism and defended the measures it had taken to address it, leading victims groups to question whether he really “got it” about abuse.

His comments Wednesday further cemented that impression, especially given the last papal visit to the U.S., Benedict XVI’s 2008 trip, was dominated by the issue and was highlighted with Benedict’s first meeting with victims.

Francis, too, is expected to meet with victims on this trip, though church officials have said any such meeting will be announced only after it has taken place.

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Four men who say they were sexually abused by clergy gathered outside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Thursday to announce their group sent a formal complaintwith the Vatican, charging that Springfield’s bishop “harms his flock.”

The group also sent a letterto Bishop Thomas Paprocki asking that they be allowed to speak at a Diocesan gathering later this month. “We think that would be a long overdue, welcome gesture on his part, and we think that it would encourage other victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to come forward. Kids are safe when abuse is reported or abuse is not reported in a climate…of fear and shame,’’ said David Clohessy, former national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and volunteer director of the Missouri group.

The other letter is in response to a new process by which laypeople can report to the Vatican a bishop who interferes with an abuse report or abuse investigation, he said. “We frankly think Bishop Paprocki has done worse than that. This secrecy, and recklessness, deters and discourages victims from reporting their harm.”

A spokesman for Diocese of Springfield said the accusation that Paprocki has protected priests who have abused youth is false, and pointed to a lengthy reportissued by the Illinois Attorney general earlier this year about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

That report found that 451 Catholic clerics and religious brothers abused at least 1,997 children across all of the dioceses in Illinois.

“SNAP said the bishop is hiding abuser priests. The AG report didn’t conclude that. “We encourage victim survivors to contact the diocese and civil authorities. “

That report’s section on the Springfield diocese concludes: “What can be said is that as things stand, the Diocese of Springfield has yet to reconcile itself with its past.

To do that, the diocese must commit to transparency and survivor healing through deeds, listening to survivors and their pleas for trauma-informed responses. The diocese must also openly acknowledge that turning its back for half a century on the needs of children suffering sex abuse at the hands of its clerics was in no way “virtuous.”

One of the men who spoke outside the cathedral is 57-year-old Scott Peters who lives in Glen Carbon. As a child at St. Patrick’s School in Decatur, he said, he was abused on multiple occasions by the now-deceased Monsignor Joseph Cullen O’Brien, who is named in the attorney general’s report.

“At the time the abuse occurred I was scared, confused and frozen. Something in me died,’’ he said. “My innocence was forever stolen by a so-called representative of God. And I continue to deal with the lifelong effects of the abuse on my path to deal with the secrecy, denial and protection of predator priests.”

Another man was Thomas Fuller of Norwalk, Connecticut who said he was abused as a 19-year-old while at Notre Dame University.

“I thought God had done it, and God had betrayed me, and abused me,’ he said. “And that’s a mistake.”

The effects of abuse are really terrible, you know. Relationships that I couldn’t either start or maintain, and finances that I didn’t earn, retirement that I don’t have. Low self esteem,” he said.

“Many people do not survive this. I know a man last month who took his own life.”

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