BENEDICT XVI VISITS THE U.S.

Pope 'deeply ashamed' of church sex scandal

Vowing to work to keep pedophiles out of the clergy, Benedict breaks with his predecessor and strongly condemns priestly child abuse

Toronto Globe & Mail

MICHAEL VALPY

April 16, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI deftly confronted the U.S. Roman Catholic sex scandal and its 5,000 victims before his plane arrived in the United States yesterday, using words more powerful than any his predecessor ever uttered to condemn priestly child abuse.

In a transatlantic meeting with reporters aboard his chartered Alitalia aircraft, the Pope described his personal difficulty in understanding how clergy could have so betrayed their callings, and he declared it far better for his priest-short church to live with empty pulpits than to again risk letting sexual abusers into its seminaries.

"It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen," he said in English, in response to a written question submitted to him in advance of his meeting with journalists.

"We are deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future."

U.S. President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, went to Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington to greet the Pope yesterday afternoon, the first time the U.S. President had gone to an airport to meet a visiting head of state. The Pope is the secular leader of the Vatican City State.

The United States, one of the world's most populous Catholic countries, is in the midst of a presidential election campaign and both the Republican and Democratic parties and their presidential contenders have been assiduously courting the Catholic vote.

Benedict's six-day visit to the United States includes an official welcome today, his 81st birthday, at the White House, a mass celebrated at Washington Nationals baseball stadium tomorrow, an address to the United Nations in New York on Friday and a visit to Sept. 11, 2001's ground zero on Sunday, followed by a mass at Yankee Stadium.

He will also meet with Catholic educators in Washington to present his views of what Catholic schools and universities should offer their students and preside over an ecumenical assembly with other religious leaders.

Michael Higgins, president of St. Thomas University in Fredericton and one of the world's foremost authorities on the contemporary Catholic Church, said the Pope's politically astute, forthright statement on his aircraft underscored how differently Benedict and his predecessor John Paul II viewed sex scandal and the priesthood in general.

"Benedict has a less romanticized, more grounded view of the priesthood than John Paul," Dr. Higgins said. "And I don't think John Paul ever grasped the enormity of what took place in the American church. Benedict is much more pragmatic."

He suggested that the Pope's statement, instantly transmitted to U.S. radio and television stations, likely had lanced criticism against him for not including Boston, the epicentre of the sex scandal, on his itinerary, an omission that Dr. Higgins suggested was outside the Pope's control.

Boston's once-powerful archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, was forced from office in 2002 because of his protection of abusive priests but later appointed by John Paul II to several authoritative church positions in Rome, an act that still rankles many U.S. Catholics.

Dr. Higgins drew a further comparison of the two popes in their handling of Mexican priest Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ and its 70,000-member companion lay organization, Regnum Christi.

Despite sexual abuse allegations against Father Maciel dating back three decades, he remained a close friend of John Paul II. However, in 2006, a year after Benedict XVI was elected to the papacy, Father Maciel was barred from performing priestly duties in public. He died three months ago.

Dr. Higgins said the Pope's statement would send a message to seminary rectors in North America not to loosen admission standards even though some have been privately complaining about the quality of candidates applying for entry.

Abuse in the church

Sex abuse scandals in the United States have hung over the Roman Catholic church for nearly a decade.

1984 Abuse scandals in Louisiana begin to attract attention of leading freelance journalist Jason Berry. His 1992 book Lead Us Not into Temptation contends 400 priests and brothers were involved in abuses during the previous eight years in North America.

January, 2002 The Boston Globe reports that 130 people were abused by former priest John Geoghan during three decades where he was reassigned rather than removed from contact with young boys.

December, 2002 Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law, the most senior Roman Catholic official in the United States, resigns over his handling of clergy sexual abuse.

June, 2002 The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops directs each diocese to promptly investigate all allegations of sexual abuse.

September, 2003 The Boston Archdiocese agrees to pay up to $85-million to settle lawsuits filed by hundreds of people who say they were sexually abused by clergy.

February, 2004 The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops releases a report on alleged sexual abuse of children by priests in the United States over 52 years beginning in 1950. It finds that 10,667 people accused priests of child sexual abuse from 1950 through 2002, and more than 17 per cent of accusers had siblings who were also allegedly abused.

February, 2006 Roman Catholic diocese of Covington, which covers a large area of Kentucky, settles abuse claims for $85-million.

July, 2007 The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles agrees to pay $660-million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating as far back as the 1940s in the largest compensation deal of its kind.

Source: Reuters News Agency

April 16, 2008The Pope's Visit

Pope, in U.S., Is ‘Ashamed’ of Pedophile Priests

By IAN FISHER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI chose to address bluntly the sex scandal that has torn at the church here even before he landed Tuesday on his first official visit to the United States, saying he was “deeply ashamed” by the actions of pedophile priests.

His comments aboard his plane, in answer to a written question submitted by a reporter and selected by the Vatican, appeared to soothe many Catholics but left others demanding more action than words.

“It’s difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing, to give the love of God to these children,” the pope said, adding that the church would work to exclude pedophiles from the priesthood.

“It is more important to have good priests than to have many priests,” he said.

The words were his strongest ever on the issue, one he clearly wanted to emphasize as he arrived on a six-day visit to Washington and New York. His comments were in response to the first of four questions he answered on the plane — chosen from 20 the press corps had submitted in advance.

It was unclear whether these would be the last words from Benedict on the issue, which ruptured the faith between parishioners and priests and has cost the church some $2 billion, or whether it was an opening signal of both reconciliation and more to come. Church officials have said they expected the pope to address the scandal more than once during his visit, and there is speculation that he may even meet with some victims.

But victims’ advocates clearly were not satisfied by the comments.

“He talks about feeling shame for the scandal but it’s a far cry from the shame that victims have had to live with our entire lives,” said Becky Ianni, 50, who said she was abused by her parish priest in Alexandria, Va., from age 9 to 11.

She was speaking at a vigil outside St. Dominic Church in Washington when the pope’s plane landed just before 4 p.m. Those at the vigil held a long vinyl banner with photographs of more than 60 children abused by priests. They explained that the 15 or so faces that were framed with black boxes were those of victims who had committed suicide.

“We don’t really need his sense of shame,” Ms. Ianni said. “We need him to take firm actions to correct the situation.”

The pope might actually be signaling that he was close to authorizing a change in canon law that would explicitly bar sexual abusers from the priesthood, said Nicholas P. Cafardi, dean emeritus of Duquesne Law School. A civil and canon lawyer, Mr. Cafardi was an original member of the National Review Board appointed by the American bishops at the height of the abuse scandal, in 2002.

There is a section in the church’s Code of Canon law that specifies that a man cannot be ordained a priest, or cannot remain a priest, if he has committed certain acts, like homicide, self-mutilation, attempted suicide or procuring an abortion, said Mr. Cafardi, the author of “Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops’ Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse of Children” (Paulist Press, 2008).

“It’s time to add to that list pedophilia and sexual abuse of children,” Mr. Cafardi said. “I’m reading Benedict’s remarks as heading toward a change in the law of the universal church, so that this can be implemented throughout the Catholic world.”

He said it was unlikely that the pope would use a papal visit to announce a change in canon law. But, he added: “He’s raised expectations now, and he’s not an unkind person. You don’t raise expectations to bash them.”

Mathew N. Schmalz, an associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit institution in Worcester, Mass., said Benedict’s remarks on the plane were significant because they represented a change in tone.

“He was reputed, at least during the tenure of John Paul II, to be uncomfortable with the church apologizing for the sins of its past,” Professor Schmalz said. “But quite clearly, here he is offering if not a mea culpa, then a sincere statement of regret for what happened, and taking responsibility for the church’s role.”

The timing of the pope’s remarks is also important, Professor Schmalz said.

“He’s putting it out there right away, and so he is setting the tone,” he said. “He recognizes there is no way for him to avoid this issue, so he’s addressing it.”

Benedict is the third pope to travel to the United States. Pope Paul VI visited once, in 1965; John Paul II made seven trips to the United States.

President Bush traveled to Andrews Air Force Base to meet Benedict, whose visit is clearly an event of some pomp and great celebration for many of America’s 64 million Catholics.

The white-haired pope, dressed in his traditional white vestments and red shoes, stepped off the Alitalia Boeing 777 and greeted a crowd with a two-handed salute. Because of the wind, he had taken off his zucchetto, his white skullcap, and carried it until he reached the red carpet, where President Bush, his wife, Laura, and daughter Jenna were waiting.

Several hundred spectators waved yellow and white Vatican pennants and sang “Happy Birthday” to Benedict, a native of Germany who turns 81 on Wednesday.

Neither the pope nor the president made any public comments, and the pope retired immediately to the residence of the nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States.

The official meeting between the pope and the president is scheduled for Wednesday morning at the White House. Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, told reporters here that the president and pope would discuss human rights, fighting extremism in the Muslim world, Lebanon and hunger in Africa.

On the plane, the pope said he also planned to raise the issue of immigration, contentious in America, but on which the Vatican has clear opinions. Among his concerns, he said, is the “grave problem of separation of families.”

“This really is dangerous to the fabric — social, moral, human — of these countries,” he said, adding that where it was possible to reunite families, it should be done.

In the longer-term, the pope said, the solution is creating enough development in poor countries “so there would be no need to immigrate because there would be sufficient jobs.”

“On this point I will also speak with the president because, above all, the United States must help countries to develop themselves in the interests of everyone, not only of these countries but of the world and even the United States,” he said.

The Vatican did not signal that Iraq — an issue on which the Vatican and the Bush administration have disagreed — would be part of the agenda.

Ms. Perino said she did not expect it to be brought up. “Obviously there was a difference of opinion back in 2003 and beyond, in subsequent years,” she said. “But now I think that there is an understanding that with the strategy that’s working in Iraq right now, the most important thing we can do is help to solidify the situation.”

After three days in Washington during which he will meet with Catholic educators and celebrate Mass at Nationals Park, he will travel to New York on Friday to address the United Nations.

On the plane, he said he would speak on the importance of human rights.

Benedict, who has often spoken favorably about how Americans observe their religious beliefs, was also asked, on the plane, whether he felt America could serve as a model for a Europe, which is far more secularized.

“Certainly Europe can’t simply copy the United States,” he said. “We have our own history.” But he said the United States was interesting because it “started with the positive idea of secularism.”“This new people was made of communities that had escaped official state purges and wanted a lay state, a secular state that opened the possibility for all confessions and all form of religious exercise,” he added. “Therefore it was a state that was intentionally secular. It was the exact opposite of state religion, but it was secular out of love for religion and for an authenticity that can only be lived freely.”Ian Urbina contributed to this report.

Pope vows to bar pedophiles becoming priests

Philip Pullella

Reuters

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Tuesday he was "deeply ashamed" over sexual abuse of children by priests and vowed to do everything possible to stop pedophiles entering the priesthood in future.

"We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry," he told reporters accompanying him on his first trip as pope to the United States.

"We are deeply ashamed and will do whatever is possible so that this does not happen in the future," he said on board the plane to Washington.

The U.S. trip is the first by a pontiff since a wave of sex abuse scandals began in 2002, provoking lawsuits that have forced dioceses to pay more than

$2 billion in settlements.

Benedict said the Church will do everything possible in screening candidates for the priesthood "so that only really sound persons can be admitted."

"It is more important to have good priests than to have many priests," said the pontiff, who will be greeted upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base by U.S. President George W. Bush.

The pope is expected to discuss sexual abuse again during the six-day trip to the United States, during which he also will pray at Ground Zero in New York and address the United Nations.

Flagging the issue ahead of arrival, he said abuse had caused "great suffering" to the Church in the United States.

"If I read the histories of these victims, it's difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing, to give the love of God to these children," he said.

A poll released this month by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life showed the German-born pope was viewed favorably by most Americans, but was not as popular as his predecessor John Paul II.

The pope, who will also mark the third anniversary of his election during the trip, has said he hopes the visit will lead to a spiritual renewal in America.

He addresses the United Nations on Friday and has said he aims to draw attention to the need for greater peace and justice around the world.

In New York, Benedict will also make a brief stop at a synagogue to wish the city's Jewish community a happy Passover.

He ends the trip on Sunday after visiting Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. He will also say Mass at Yankee Stadium.

(Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Richard Balmforth)