In his first overseas visit since allegations of sexual abuse involving the Catholic Church erupted, Pope Benedict XVI (center), smiles as he waves from a boat during a trip from Kalkara ferry to the Valletta waterfront on Sunday with youth group members.

VALLETTA, Malta (AFP) – Pope Benedict XVI wept during meetings with Maltese victims of the pedophile priest scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church and expressed his own “shame and sorrow.”

“He listened to us individually, and prayed and cried with us,” said Lawrence Grech, one of eight abuse victims who met the Pope for 25 minutes in the Vatican’s embassy in Malta.

The Vatican said Sunday that Benedict had “expressed his shame and sorrow over what victims and their families have suffered.”

The Pope “prayed with them and assured them that the Church is doing, and will continue to do, all in its power to investigate allegations (and) to bring to justice those responsible for abuse,” a Vatican statement said.

Benedict promised the victims “effective measures designed to safeguard young people in the future,” it added.

He told victims the church will do everything possible to protect children and bring abusive priests to justice, the Vatican said.

The emotional moment carried no new admissions from the Vatican, which has strongly rejected accusations that efforts to cover up for abusive priests were directed by the church hierarchy for decades. But the Pontiff told the men that the church would “implement effective measures” to protect children, the Vatican said, without offering details.

Benedict met for more than a half-hour with eight Maltese men who say they were abused by four priests when they were boys living at a Catholic orphanage. During the meeting in the chapel at the Vatican’s embassy here, Benedict expressed his “shame and sorrow” at the pain the men and their families suffered, the Vatican said.

“Everybody was crying,” one of the men, Joseph Magro, 38, told Associated Press Television News after the meeting. “I told him my name was Joseph, and he had tears in his eyes.”

The visit — which came on the second day of Benedict’s two-day trip to this largely Roman Catholic island — marked the first time Benedict had met with abuse victims since the worldwide clerical abuse scandal engulfed the Vatican earlier this year.

“I was impressed by the humility of the Pope,” Grech told AFP.

“He was ready to take on the embarrassment (for deeds) done by others. He was very courageous...He even blessed a cross I had and thanked me for speaking out about the abuse,” he added, struggling to hold back his tears.

Earlier, he said, he had wanted an apology: but now his anger had subsided and he was satisfied with his meeting with the Pope, “the topmost person who could have listened to me and my story.

“I will continue my battle, not against the Church but against pedophilia.”

Malta recently joined the list of countries shattered by pedophilia priest scandals in the past several months.

Grech and other members of the group gave a press conference last week at which they told how they were abused at an orphanage in central Malta run by priests.

Benedict, who met with victims in Australia and the United States in 2008, has come under increasing pressure over allegations that the Vatican hierarchy, himself included, helped protect predator priests.

While the Vatican and senior bishops have rallied around the pope, the Catholic leadership has faced mounting pressure to repair the Church’s image.

On the flight to Malta on Saturday, the Pope said Church had been “wounded by our sins.”

“Malta loves Christ who loves his Church which is his body, even if this body is wounded by our sins,” he said.

Predominantly Catholic Malta, where one in three children under 16 attend Catholic schools, has itself been hit by numerous abuse cases.