The pope met the three women and two men along with their relatives and educators at the San Carlo Borromeo seminary. The gathering with the five abuse victims took place in Philadelphia on Sunday - the final day of the pope's trip to the United States.

Francis praised the victims as "true heralds of mercy" who deserved the church's gratitude for their "essential contribution" toward establishing the truth.

"I promise that all those responsible for sexual abuse of children will be punished," Francis told a gathering of bishops in Philadelphia, after meeting for about 30 minutes with the five individuals who had been sexually abused as children by clergy members.

"For the sexual abuse of children, these cannot be maintained in secret, and I commit to a careful oversight to insure that youth are protected and all responsible will be held accountable," the pope told the bishops.

'Deep shame'

Saying he felt "deep shame" about the acts, the pope said that "God weeps" for their suffering. However, in a move that signaled a new effort by the church to redirect the discussion, the Vatican said not all five of the victims were abused by actual members of the clergy; some of the three women and two men had been victimized by family members or educators.

The pope had previously agreed to create a new Vatican tribunal to prosecute bishops who failed to protect their congregations by covering up for pedophile priests.

Humility in the face of humiliation

The Catholic Church has been tarnished in recent years by worldwide revelations about pedophile priests, and by allegations that its hierarchy failed to punish offenders or covered up their crimes for decades. As many as 100,000 US children may have been the victims of clerical sex abuse, insurance experts said in a paper presented at a Vatican conference in 2012.

The city of Philadelphia is one of the cities where the scandal was most serious in the 1980s. A monsignor in Philadelphia had been found guilty of endangering children by not removing pedophile priests, becoming the first American church official convicted of such an offense.

Pope Francis' six-day trip to the US was widely hailed as a success, but some criticized the fact that he did not officially have the meeting on his public agenda.

The pope's predecessor, Benedict XVI, had met victims of the sex abuse scandal in Boston in 2008.

ss/gsw (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)