Pope Francis

The pontiff's comments were in a letter penned nearly a week after a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailed decades of alleged child abuse and cover-ups. "We abandoned them," Francis wrote.

After 16 hours of debate, the country's Senate voted 38 to 31 against a measure passed earlier by the lower house of Congress that would have allowed abortions through the 14th week of pregnancy.

It's a shift for the church, which used to consider the death penalty an "acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good" in response to certain crimes.

Philip Wilson was convicted in May for failing to report child sex abuse by a priest in the 1970s. He had stepped aside from his role but hadn't formally resigned, saying he was planning to appeal.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick denies having sexually abused a teenager when he was a priest in New York decades ago but says he accepts the Holy See's decision that he refrain from any public ministry.

"A person's dignity does not depend on them being a citizen, a migrant, or a refugee," Francis tweeted Wednesday.

The country's lower chamber of Congress has passed a bill that would legalize abortion before 14 weeks, approving it by a four-vote margin. But it's likely to face a tougher test in the upper chamber.

The raid came days after three bishops in Chile resigned over the church's decades-long sex abuse and coverup.

Bishop Juan Barros was accused of covering up the acts of a notorious abuser. Pope Francis enraged thousands of Catholics in Chile when he appointed Barros as bishop of Osorno in 2015.