Pope Benedict XVI listens as he attends a meeting with representatives of other religions Thursday at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington.

Washington ? Pope Benedict XVI prayed with tearful victims of clergy sex abuse in a chapel Thursday, an extraordinary gesture from a pontiff who has made atoning for the great shame of the U.S. church the cornerstone of his first papal trip to America.

Benedict’s third day in the U.S. began with a packed open-air Mass celebrated in 10 languages at a baseball stadium, and it included a speech to Roman Catholic college and university presidents.

But the real drama happened privately, in the chapel of the papal embassy between events.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman, said that Benedict and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley met with a group of five or six abuse victims for about 25 minutes, offering them encouragement and hope. The group from O’Malley’s archdiocese were all adults, men and women, who had been molested when they were minors. Each spoke privately with the pope and the whole group prayed together.

One of the victims, Bernie McDaid, told The Associated Press that he shook the pope’s hand, told him he was an altar boy and had been abused by a priest in the sacristy of his parish. The abuse, he told Benedict, was not only sexual but spiritual.

“I said, ‘Holy Father, you need to know you have a cancer in your flock and I hope you will do something for this problem; you have to fix this,'” McDaid said. “He looked down at the floor and back at me, like, ‘I know what you mean.’ He took it in emotionally. We looked eye to eye.”

McDaid said that the importance of the moment had not sunk in, but that he and others had waited a long time for it, and that “if everyone wants change, then change will occur.”

Olan Horne, another Boston-area victim who prayed and talked with Benedict, told the AP, “There was an … unscripted, unfiltered opportunity face-to-face. I believe we turned the pope’s head a little in the right direction.”

Both men have worked with church officials in the aftermath of the crisis, including meeting with a new office established by U.S. bishops in response to the scandal.

Their sentiments were echoed by O’Malley, who called the meeting “a very moving experience for all who participated.”

“The Holy Father shared that he has come to the United States with great sorrow in his heart over this crisis and has been continuously praying for all who were affected,” the cardinal said in a statement Thursday night.

O’Malley had invited Benedict to Boston as part of his U.S. journey, and when that didn’t work out, the cardinal kept in touch with the papal nuncio, Benedict’s representative in the U.S., to see if it was possible to put him in touch with victims during the visit, said the Rev. John Connolly, a special assistant to O’Malley.

“The desire to do this was definitely from the Holy Father,” Connolly said.

The pope ultimately asked O’Malley to invite a small group of victims who were “both open to meeting him and would derive a spiritual benefit,” Connolly said.

Well over 4,000 priests have been accused of molesting minors in the U.S. since 1950. The church has paid out more than $2 billion, much of it in just the last six years, after the case of a serial molester in Boston gained national attention and inspired many victims to step forward. Six dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy because of abuse costs.