Women vent their anger at Vatican child abuse conference

Pope Francis attends the four-day meeting on the global sexual abuse crisis, at the Vatican February 22, 2019. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A nun and a woman journalist delivered the toughest criticism of Church leaders heard so far at Pope Francis' sexual abuse conference on Saturday, accusing them of hypocrisy and covering up horrendous crimes against children.

Some 200 senior Church officials, all but ten of them men, listened at times in stunned silence in a Vatican audience hall as the women read their frank and at times angry speeches on the penultimate day of the conference convened by the pope to confront a worldwide scandal.