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Church's Woes Follow Pope on Trip to Malta By Rachel Donadio New York Times April 17, 2010 Divorce and abortion are illegal in Catholic Malta. Malta — In spite of the cloud of volcanic ash drifting south from Iceland, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in this Catholic nation on Saturday evening in his first foreign trip since a sexual abuse crisis began engulfing the Roman Catholic Church. Benedict's visit — commemorating the 1,950th anniversary of the shipwreck of St. Paul on Malta — comes at the most turbulent moment in his five-year-old papacy as he struggles to manage a torrent of allegations that the church hierarchy did not move swiftly to discipline priests who sexually abused minors. As has happened often in recent weeks, there seemed to be two narratives at play during the Malta visit, with the pope focusing Saturday on such issues as the secularization of Europe and the historic travails of St. Paul, while the news media and critics continued to ask questions about the current crisis. Just as the visit began, the Vatican faced new queries on the pedophilia scandal, this time prompted by newspaper reports about a cardinal who made headlines last week for having written a supportive letter in 2001 to a French bishop who was given a three-year suspended sentence for not handing over a pedophile priest to authorities. On Friday, the cardinal, Darío Castrillón Hoyos, said at a conference in Spain that he wrote to the French bishop after getting approval from Pope John Paul II, Spanish media reported. At a news conference in Malta after Benedict arrived, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, declined to respond to the substance of the cardinal's statement, one of the first by a top Vatican official to cast a shadow over the papacy of John Paul. It remained unclear whether the pope would use this trip to offer the type of strong words and actions victims and church critics have clamored for, although he did not do so in the first day. On the hourlong plane flight here, he met with reporters for five minutes but did not directly address the issue or take questions, choosing once again to use oblique language that Father Lombardi said could be considered "reflections" on the abuse crisis. Just as St. Paul's "shipwreck brought Malta the good fortune of getting the faith, we can also think that the wrecks of life can bring God's project to us and be useful for a new start of our life," Benedict said. His two speeches Saturday, meanwhile, addressed a central theme of his papacy, the Christian roots of Europe and the fight against secularism there. The Vatican has left open the possibility, however, that Benedict would meet on with a group of Maltese men who said they were abused when they were children at an orphanage. The 10 men, who have filed a criminal complaint against the priests they say abused them , have asked to meet with Benedict. Father Lombardi said last week that while he could not rule out such a meeting, it would have to take place away from "media pressure." Lawrence Grech, 37, one of the men who filed the suit, said he hoped Benedict's visit would call attention to the men's case.
"What I want is my chapter to be closed, and justice to be done," Mr. Grech said in a telephone conversation. "This is not about money, this is about information." The archbishop of Malta met with the group for the first time last week, and the Vatican's chief internal prosecutor who handles abuse cases, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, who is from Malta, has agreed to meet with them. The only direct mention of the sexual abuse crisis Saturday came from the president of Malta, George Abela, who in greeting Benedict at the airport said, "It would be wrong in my view to try to use the reprehensible indiscretions of the few to cast a shadow on the church as a whole." Mr. Abela called on both the church and governments to enact legislation and "effective, transparent mechanisms" to curb cases of abuse. The pope was able to make the trip Saturday because the skies above Rome were still clear of the ash plume covering much of Europe. A visit to this tiny island has traditionally been a love-fest for visiting pontiffs. Divorce and abortion are illegal here, and in a population of 443,000, one in three children attend Catholic school. But in recent days billboards advertising Benedict's visit have been vandalized. Yet on Saturday the narrow streets of downtown Valletta, a harborside city, were festooned with yellow-and-white banners in anticipation of the visit, and posters of Benedict adorned some shop windows. Some local residents said they were glad Benedict was coming. Domenic Caruana, who sat beside a truck selling fresh vegetables, said he did not understand the criticism of Benedict over the sexual abuse crisis. "Why is everybody speaking out about things that happened 50 years ago?" he asked. Other residents seemed more pleased that the government had paved some of Malta's notoriously bumpy roads ahead of Benedict's visit. Benedict touched on the fraught issue of illegal immigration on his flight to Malta, which is halfway between North Africa and Sicily. A member of the European Union since 2004, Malta has struggled to receive and determine the fates of the boatloads of illegal immigrants who in recent years have left North Africa for European shores. Addressing reporters on his plane , Benedict called such immigration "a great problem of our time" and called on the world to endeavor to help immigrants have "a dignified life." On Saturday evening, Benedict visited the grotto where tradition holds that St. Paul took shelter after his shipwreck. |
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