At the Vatican gathering, repeated calls were made for a radical revision of church laws and practices. The testimony of survivors was heard at the highest level and some in the hierarchy were moved to tears of remorse. But others say Francis still hasn’t gone nearly far enough

Pope Francis sat with his head bowed in front of a sea of bishops in the Paul VI Audience Hall. Fr Hans Zollner, a German Jesuit and church child protection expert, read out the words of an abuse survivor, and the Pope and the bishops prayed silently. You could hear a pin drop.

This was a very different sort of silence to the one so long associated with the Church over abuse and cover-up. It was the silence of remorse and repentance, of prayer and of resolve to take the steps on the road to conversion necessary to restore trust after the worst crisis of credibility to hit the Church in 500 years.

The Pope’s summit on abuse, a four-day meeting which saw a flurry of tears and mea culpas and heard the harrowing testimonies of abuse survivors, showed how far the leadership still has to go to make the Church a safe place for children and to establish provisions that will hold bishops accountable for their failures.

Along with proposals for new rules and guidelines, the gathering saw a significant step being taken towards that change of heart that is needed if a clerical culture that downplayed or covered up the abuse of children and vulnerable adults is to be eradicated.

Is the conversion of the heart working? Will real change occur? “The atmosphere [in the hall] was very sober,” one participant told me. “There were some voices at the beginning trying to say they didn’t have a problem. That had stopped by the third day.”