While addressing a delegation from the International Catholic Office of Children (BICE) last Friday, Pope Francis stressed that children have a right to grow up with a mother and a father.

According to Zenit News, the talk took place in Rome on April 11 and highlighted the history of the international organization that had its origin in Pope Pius XII’s intervention in defense of children after Word War II.

"Since then, this organization has always been committed to promoting the defense of the rights of minors," the pope applauded.

However, being mindful of the Church's failures in this regard in recent years, Francis offered a heartfelt apology for the harm done to children by priests.

"I feel called up to take charge of all the evil that some priests -- quite a few, quite a few in number, not in comparison with the totality -- to take charge and ask for forgiveness for the harm they have done because of sexual abuses of children," he said.

"The Church is conscious of this harm, which is a personal, moral harm of their own, by men of the Church. And we are not going to take a step back in regard to the treatment of these problems and of the sanctions that must be in place; on the contrary, I think we must be very strong; one does not fool around with children."

He also called for projects that will protect children against slave labor, the recruitment of child soldiers, and any other kind of violence against children.

"Said positively, it is necessary to reaffirm the right of children to grow up in a family, with a father and a mother capable of creating an ideal environment for their development and emotional maturity," he said. "To continue to mature in relation, in confrontation with what is the masculinity and the femininity of a father and a mother, and thus equipping their emotional maturity."

He also expressed his unequivocal support for the right of parents in the moral and religious education of their children and condemned the kind of schooling that is merely indoctrination in disguise.

"And on this point, I would like to express my rejection of all types of educational experiments with children. One cannot experiment with children and young people. They are not laboratory guinea-pigs," the pope said.

"The horrors of educational manipulation that we experienced in the great genocidal dictatorships of the 20th century have not disappeared; they keep their currency under different clothing that, with the pretension of modernity, force children and young people to walk on the dictatorial path of the 'single thought.' A great educator said to me just over a week ago: 'Sometimes one doesn’t know if with these projects – he was referring to concrete projects of education – you send a child to school or to a camp of re-education'."

For this reason, he called for the planning of educational projects that are adapted to modern times but are "always respecting human identity and liberty of conscience."

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