Popes Words of Remorse Fall Flat for Abuse Victims, by John Burns, The Age, March 23, 2010

Pope's Words of Remorse Fall Flat for Abuse Victims

By John Burns
The Age
March 23, 2010

http://www.theage.com.au/world/popes-words-of-remorse-fall-flat-for-abuse-victims-20100322-qr4s.html

IRELAND -- POPE Benedict XVI's weekend apology to sufferers of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy in Ireland has drawn a deeply sceptical and angry response from many Catholics.

In the apology - a pastoral letter read aloud at all weekend Masses across Ireland's 26 Catholic dioceses and handed out in printed form to thousands of churchgoers - Benedict ex-pressed "shame and remorse" to victims and their families for what he called "sinful and criminal" acts by members of the clergy. But in the apology, the Pope did not require that Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Irish church, or any other church leaders be disciplined for their mistakes, as some victims had hoped.

A young girl accepts a copy of the Pope's letter from Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop.

Nor did he clarify what critics in Ireland and elsewhere have said are contradictory Vatican rules about the procedures for investigating abuse cases and church leaders' responsibility to inform civil authorities about offences they uncover, a duty the Pope reiterated strongly in his letter.

By remaining silent on the issue of punishment for top church figures implicated in what critics in Ireland have described as decades of cover-up, the pastoral letter appears to have done little to assuage the dismay and anger of many in Ireland at years of revelations about paedophile priests and child carers.

While Benedict called for forgiveness, a common response among worshippers and nonworshippers alike was that there will be no healing until at least some church leaders resign.

The Pope inflamed anger on Sunday by failing to mention the apology at his weekly Vatican appearance. Campaigners had hoped he would use his sermon to apologise in public. Instead, he asked Catholics around the world to be "indulgent towards sinners and pray to God to ask for forgiveness for our failings".

In Geneva, a leading Swiss priest has called on the Vatican to set up an international register of Catholic clergy who have been reported for sex abuse. Abbot Martin Werlen, a member of the Swiss Bishops Conference, said he feared the Catholic hierarchy had failed to take the impact of the latest child sex abuse scandals in Ireland and elsewhere seriously enough.

Abbot Werlen told the Sonntagsblick newspaper that an official Swiss church body that deals with sex abuse had discussed the idea of "a central office in Rome, which would register church people who have been reported".

Such a list, he said, could be consulted by bishops "anywhere in the world" when they made appointments.