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At the age of 94, retired Pope Benedict XVI said he knows he will soon stand before God's judgment and he prayed that he would be forgiven for his shortcomings, including in handling allegations of clerical sexual abuse.

Amending a written statement made to a panel investigating clerical sexual abuse in his former Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, retired Pope Benedict XVI said he was present at a 1980 meeting to discuss the transfer of a priest accused of misconduct.

A law firm's report on how abuse cases were handled in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising incriminated retired Pope Benedict XVI, with lawyers accusing him of misconduct in four cases during his tenure as Munich archbishop.

Gathering information and statistics on the sexual abuse of minors is an important tool for assessing established responses and for crafting recommendations to fix a failed system, said U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

To protect the sacrament of reconciliation as a "channel of grace" for victims of sexual abuse, the Catholic Church must do a better job instructing priests on what to do if a victim recounts his or her abuse in the confessional and in the unlikely case that an abuser confesses, said Jesuit Father Hans Zollner.

Honoring two reporters who have covered the Vatican for more than 40 years, Pope Francis paid tribute to all journalists who work to explain what is going on in the world and "make it less obscure."

Every form of abuse -- sexual, psychological or an abuse of power -- is part of "the culture of death" that needs to be eradicated through the conversion, education and the active participation of everyone, Pope Francis said.

An adult survivor of abuse by a priest appealed to the world's seminarians to become good priests and to make sure the "bitter truth" always prevails, not silence about scandals and their cover-up.

Pope Francis urged bishops from throughout Eastern Europe to recognize mistakes in their handling of sexual abuse in order to open "new horizons of love and reciprocal service."

While financial reforms in the Vatican are progressing steadily, cases involving corruption and malfeasance in the Eternal City are "a disease that we relapse into," Pope Francis said.