By Stacy Meichtry
The Wall Street Journal
May 12, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704250104575237843795791912.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop
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| Pope Benedict XVI delivered his speech next to Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva upon his arrival at Lisbon, Portugal, on Tuesday. Photo by Jose Manuel Ribeiro/Reuters |
Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday called on the Roman Catholic Church to take responsibility for its crisis of sexual-abuse allegations against priests, dismissing claims that the scandal had been whipped up in order to discredit the church.
"The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sin within the church," Pope Benedict said, according to Vatican radio. Responding to a question about the "suffering" of the church amid allegation of sexual abuse of minors, the pontiff placed th blame for the scandal squarely on the church and called for "purification."
The pope's comments were his strongest since the emergence this year of hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse and cover-ups across Europe, and indicated a growing recognition of the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church. The scandal has already driven people away from the church, threatening the pope's central aim of reviving its membership, particularly in Europe.
Earlier this year, the pontiff held silent on the crisis, leaving a vacuum that other Vatican officials and prominent Vatican clerics filled with controversial statements. The pope's personal preacher, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, used a Good Friday sermon on April 2 to liken scrutiny of the church to the persecution of Jews. The Vatican's spokesman disassociated the Vatican from the sermon.
Two days later, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, stood before Pope Benedict during Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square and dismissed scrutiny of the pope as "petty gossip." Victims of priestly sex abuse were outraged.
The pope broke his silence on April 15 when Vatican Radio published a papal address to advisers, calling on the church to "do penance" in the face of "attacks"—though without explicitly mentioning sex-abuse.
Days later on a flight to Malta, the pope told reporters how the church had been "wounded" by "our sins." However, he still did not clearly state that he was referring to sexual abuse.
Later in his trip to Malta, he met with sex-abuse victims behind closed doors at the Vatican embassy. The victims afterward said the pope had wept with them and promised he would take steps to protect children from abusive priests.
Returning to the Vatican, the pope recounted the Malta meeting to pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. "I shared with them their suffering, and emotionally prayed with them, assuring them of church action," he said.
Pope Benedict traditionally takes questions on foreign trips from traveling reporters. On the flight to Portugal on Tuesday, he responded to a question about the sex-abuse crisis, saying the church's internal struggle to confront it was "terrifying."
The church, the pope said, "has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn, on one hand, forgiveness, but also the need for justice," according to Vatican Radio.
The pope's remarks Tuesday marked the "beginning of a shift" toward accountability, said Maeve Lewis, director of "One in Four," an Irish support group for abuse victims. Ms. Lewis added, however, that the Vatican's "hierarchy" continued to support "a culture of cover-ups which places loyalty and obedience above the interests of child-victims."
The pope did not say whether any Vatican policies led to the abuse. The Vatican is currently facing a handful of lawsuits filed in the U.S. alleging that its actions and policies allowed instances of childhood sex-abuse by Catholic priests to take place.
To date, the Vatican has not been found legally liable in U.S. courts; the vast majority of suits filed over sex-abuse allegations in the U.S. have been filed against individual bishops and dioceses. Jeffrey Lena, a U.S. lawyer for the Vatican, said the pope's Tuesday remarks were an "important statement to the world" but that they would have no legal implications in the lawsuits.
In more recent weeks, the pope has accepted a series of resignations from bishops in Belgium, Germany and Ireland who have been accused of committing abuse or covering it up. The Vatican says the pope has not put pressure on the bishops to resign. But the burst of departures marked a change from the Vatican's traditional practice of waiting months to accept the resignations of tainted officials.
Church officials in Germany, the pope's homeland, have begun digging through internal archives in an effort to unearth sexual-abuse allegations dating back decades. This month, the Vatican announced plans to overhaul the Legion of Christ, a powerful religious order that recently admitted that its late founder had sexually abused teenage seminarians and fathered at least one child.
Benedict XVI was heading to Lisbon for a four-day trip that will include a visit to the country's venerated Fatima shrine. Predominantly Catholic Portugal has not experienced the clusters of sexual abuse allegations that have hit Germany and other European countries.
—Ashby Jones and Margherita Stancati contributed to this article.
Write to Stacy Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com
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