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	Pope Wants 'Discretion' in Next Meeting with Abuse Victims Asia One April 13, 2010 http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20100413-210118.html Pope Benedict XVI will not bow to 'media pressure' to meet with victims of paedophile priests, the Vatican spokesman said Tuesday while not ruling out such a meeting this weekend in Malta. Such meetings have "always taken place in an atmosphere of contemplation and discretion" and the pontiff does not want to hold any "under media pressure, with little opportunity to listen," Federico Lombardi told a news conference. "The pope has already said he was prepared to meet (abuse victims) as he has done in the past," in the United States and Australia in 2008, Lombardi told the Vatican press corps. Eleven Maltese victims of predator priests on Monday asked for a meeting with the pope, who will visit the tiny Mediterranean island on Saturday and Sunday. Their spokesman said they wanted the pope to "apologise to us in person," but that they were not seeking "revenge" or financial compensation. No such encounter is on the pope's "already very tight" programme for the visit, Lombardi said, while adding that he would neither announce one nor rule one out. "Obviously the pope meets whomever he wants, it depends on the circumstances, but don't hold out great hopes" of a meeting with victims in Malta, Lombardi told the news conference. The visit to the European Union's smallest member state, a speck of land between Italy and north Africa, will last slightly more than 24 hours. Benedict will pay a courtesy call on President George Abela and meet with young people as well as visiting Rabat, in the centre of the archipelago's main island, where by tradition the apostle Saint Paul took refuge in a grotto after his shipwreck on Malta. The Roman Catholic Church has battled a wave of paedophile priest scandals in the United States and Europe since last November. The pope's visit to Malta follows recent revelations that a paedophilia "response team" set up by the Church there in 1999 had received allegations against 45 priests. Nearly half of the cases have been ruled groundless, the Church said Monday, adding however: "For the Church, every case is one too many."
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