In an unprecedented event, Pope Benedict XVI met Thursday with a small group of men and women who were sexually abused by their priests in their youth.

The encounter was very emotional and the participants said they experienced a long-awaited feeling of “fulfillment” afterwards.

During the 25-minute meeting inside the chapel of the Apostolic Nunciature, the pope spoke to the victims both individually and as a group and they all prayed together. Some of the participants wept.

"It was very positive, healing, I think, and very prayerful," said Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, who organized and attended the meeting.

O’Malley gave the pope an oversize hand-sewn book in which a calligrapher had written the names of nearly 1,500 men and women from the Boston region who reported having been sexually abused by priests within several decades.

The meeting, which can be considered an historic event, took place in the third day of the pope’s pilgrimage to the United States, during which the pontiff has tried to confront the shocking sexual abuse scandal that devastated the Roman Catholic Church in America.

Benedict expressed his regrets and “deep shame” for the people who had been abused and also for the fact that the Vatican had not paid enough attention to the victims’ cases.

One of the participants in the meeting, Olan Horne, told the National Public Radio that he had waited for so long for a sign of understanding from the head of the Catholic Church, but the Vatican had adopted a neutral attitude until now. After the meeting, he declared he finally felt “fulfilled” and almost healed.

"For eight years, I've been asking to hear the words from the top, and from no one else," Horne said. "And we heard them today. And we heard them face to face, without a filter, without a proxy. It wasn't symbolic. It was from him to me."

Horne said the pope had apologized for his bad English and “for everything.”

"He stood there feet from us, and you could tell he was heavy, heavy with responsibility," Horne said. "He looked at us deeply. You could see he searched for words, that he was thinking."

Very much impressed by the encounter, Pope Benedict expressed his determination to do better and prevent such sad cases from taking place.