Baltimore ? Cardinal William H. Keeler Friday issued a public apology during a noontime Mass to Dontee D. Stokes, the 26-year-old man who was charged this week with shooting a priest who, Stokes says, sexually abused him a decade ago.

Keeler, speaking at the Basilica of the Assumption, began his homily with a reference to “the events of this week, which bring so strikingly and so painfully home to us the impact of sexual child abuse.

“I take this occasion to express publicly my apologies to all who have been victims, and in a very special way to Mr. Stokes, who has suffered intensely because of the difficulties in which he now finds himself and which we find ourselves,” he said. “I express my sympathy to him and to his family members to all who suffer because of what has been transpiring. It is an occasion for us before the Lord to commit ourselves more deeply to the protection of young people, the protection of children.”

Tamara Stokes, Dontee’s mother, said Keeler’s gesture was not enough. “The apology should have come on the phone, to me,” she said Friday afternoon. “From 1993 on, I never got an apology. And I still have not got an apology.”

Keeler’s spokesman, Raymond P. Kempisty, refused to say whether the cardinal would personally contact Stokes or his family. He confirmed that Keeler visited the Rev. Maurice Blackwell, the former parish priest accused of abuse, on Tuesday at his bedside at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center.