While Mary was given a special grace, the pope said, the feast day should remind Catholics that the church professes faith in "the resurrection of the body" for all who are saved by Christ.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the church in Ireland was rocked by a series of very public revelations about sexual abuse and, particularly, about how the abuse and allegations of it were mishandled by senior church leaders.

It is true that “sometimes we are the ones who betray the Gospel,” the pope said.

The "regular canonical trial" for an accused bishop, experts say, usually would be conducted by the apostolic tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Dealing with the reality of potential abuse and the history of clerical sexual abuse in the church is a process.

"I am struck by the work of reflection, discernment and the decisions you have made," the pope wrote in the letter dated Aug. 5 and posted on the website of the Chilean bishops' conference.

Pope Francis' revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to assert that capital punishment is morally inadmissible shows how the church can grow in its understanding of the implications of basic tenets of faith.

Pope Francis will visit Dublin and Knock Aug. 25-26, mainly for the World Meeting of Families. But he also will meet Irish government leaders and is expected to meet with survivors of abuse.

Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, head of the Vatican office for laity and family, said he was "shocked" when he heard allegations of years of sexual abuse and harassment by Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the man who ordained him a bishop and whom he served as an auxiliary bishop for six years.

Tweeting with hashtags that translate as "Closed ports" and "Open hearts," Italy's interior minister disputed claims that the Italian government was complicit in leaving a migrant to die in the Mediterranean Sea as she clung to a board from a destroyed fishing boat.