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	Pope Benedict XVI Must Declare His Own Guilt in Sex Abuse Cover-up By Richard Owen The Times March 25, 2010 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7076611.ece To the outside world, it may look as if it is only a matter of time before the scandal engulfing the Church brings the pontificate of Benedict XVI crashing down. But that is not how it looks in the Vatican, which marks time in centuries, not mere weeks, months or even years. The last Pope to step down voluntarily was Celestine V, in 1294 — and he was a mountain hermit who agreed only reluctantly to be Pope in the first place. The Vatican view is that Pope Benedict is tackling the crisis vigorously, courageously and effectively. His pastoral letter to the Irish bishops was “unprecedented” and only issued after long reflection following his meeting with the bishops in Rome last month. Others see a dark plot woven by the Church’s enemies. Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, former head of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, denounced yesterday what he called a “conspiracy” against Rome. “There is a well-organised plan with a very clear aim,” he said. He could even understand why some bishops covered up cases of child abuse: “We should not be too scandalised if some bishops knew about it but kept it secret. This is what happens in every family; you don’t wash your dirty laundry in public.” Yet polls even in the Pope’s native Germany show support for him falling rapidly, even among Catholics. The scandals are not invented by the media, they are reported by the media, including Suddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel in Germany, as more victims come forward. The Vatican is in effect blaming the bearers of bad tidings rather than itself, in a variation on the theme of “shoot the messenger”. In the case of paedophile priests, the force that is driving the scandals is not so much media sensationalism as the deep-seated anger of those who were abused and who now wish to see justice done, even if belatedly. The flood of revelations in Germany, says the head of the task force investigating cases in Regensburg — where the Pope once taught theology — has become “a tsunami”. More cases may yet emerge in Munich and Freising, where the Pope was archbishop from 1977 to 1982, or during his time as head of Vatican doctrine, when he imposed “papal confidentiality” on sex abuse cases. This week Professor Hans Kung, the Swiss theologian and noted dissident — who has known the Pope since the 1960s — said pointedly: “No one in the whole of the Catholic Church knows as much about abuse cases as the Pope.” Pope Benedict, a scholarly, shy and somewhat unworldly man, has made some imaginative gestures since 2005, visiting a mosque in Turkey and a synagogue in Rome, and issuing thoughtful encyclicals on subjects from the global economic crisis to human love. But nearly five years after his election, his credibility is at stake. “Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa,” Father Kung said. It is not in the Pope’s nature — he abhorred the “mea culpas” issued by John Paul II, his predecessor — but it may be the only way out.
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