Pope Francis delivered a strongly worded speech on Friday in which he addressed the sexual abuse scandals within the Roman Catholic church and asked for the public's forgiveness.

Francis met with members of the International Catholic Child Bureau, a French coalition of child-protection organizations, at the Vatican on Friday and made his speech on the Vatican Radio, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil which some priests, quite a few in number, obviously not compared to the number of all the priests, to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children," Francis said.

The pope's announcement came a few months after he was criticized by victims groups for defending senior prelates against the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child that accused them of covering up the actions of the abusive priests.

Following Francis' remarks, however, the Vatican decided to appoint former abuse victim and Irish campaigner Marie Collins to a new Vatican commission where she will be studying the scandals and provide advise on how to best protect children.

The wave of sexual abuse allegations against priests in North America and Europe has rocked the Catholic Church's moral authority for more than a decade.

"The church is aware of this damage," Francis said. "It is personal, moral damage carried out by men of the church, and we will not take one step backward with regards to how we will deal with this problem and the sanctions that must be imposed. On the contrary, we have to be even stronger. Because you cannot interfere with children."

In 2010, former Pope Benedict XVI made a similar statement in Ireland when he apologized to the victims of the abusive priests, according to the Times.

Pope Francis said last month in a newspaper interview that the Catholic church has been transparent throughout the scandal and argued that it's the only institution to do so in the face of such allegations.

"The Catholic Church is possibly the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility," Francis said. "No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to be attacked."