BishopAccountability.org
	Benedict the Brave Times April 20, 2008 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3784507.ece A Catholic priest from California who attended Mass with the Pope in New York at the weekend said afterwards that he thought His Holiness might have been a little stunned and surprised by the warm welcome he's received. This is entirely possible. The US has a way of surprising visitors, whether they be Benedict XVI or tourists attracted by the exchange rate and then won over by a diversity and generosity of spirit that defy stereotypes. But the real surprises of the Pope's visit have been for his hosts. Few of them can have expected him to be so candid on the subject of the sexual abuse crisis that has threatened the foundations of the Catholic Church in America; so forthright on the role of human rights and the UN in international affairs; or so disarming on his own youth, shaped as it was by Nazism. Through the content of his words over the past five days, if not the style of their delivery, the Pope has unquestionably emerged in the US from the shadow of his charismatic predecessor. He has also confirmed for those still in any doubt that he is a warmer, more responsive person than the apparently doctrinaire academic presented to the world in so many headlines on his elevation to the papacy three years ago. Yet his undoubted successes in Washington and New York prompt two important questions: can the Church now harness the goodwill left by this visit to put the abuse scandal firmly behind it, not least by recruiting new clergy in a country where one in six Catholic parishes has no priest? And does the Pope, at 81, envisage a sustained engagement in international affairs - or was his speech to the UN a one-off occasion?
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