Pope Pleads for Forgiveness over Abuse, by Rachel Donadio, The New York Times, June 12, 2010

Pope Pleads for Forgiveness over Abuse

By Rachel Donadio
New York Times
June 12, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/world/europe/12pope.html?src=mv

Pope Benedict XVI waved at the end of a mass marking the end of the Year for Priests in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Friday.

VATICAN CITY — Addressing the sexual abuse crisis from the seat of the Roman Catholic Church before thousands of white-robed priests, Pope Benedict XVI on Friday begged forgiveness, saying the church would do “everything possible” to prevent priests from abusing children.

“We, too, insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again,” Benedict told thousands of priests and the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for celebrations marking the end of the Vatican’s Year of the Priest.

The pope did not outline specific actions that the church would take to combat abuse, as many had hoped — and as Benedict had pledged at an audience in April. Nor did his remarks go much beyond what he had already said in a letter to Irish Catholics in March and in a private meeting with victims of sexual abuse on Malta in April.

But it was the first time that Benedict had asked forgiveness for the crisis from St. Peter’s Square, the heart of the church itself, and on an occasion focused on priests.

The pope said the Devil was behind the scandal, saying it had emerged now, in the middle of the Vatican’s Year of the Priest, because “the enemy,” or the Devil, wants to see “God driven out of the world.”

“And so it happened that in this very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light — particularly the abuse of the little ones,” the pope added.

He said that in admitting and training men for the priesthood, “We will do everything we can to weigh the authenticity of their vocation and make every effort to accompany priests along their journey, so that the Lord will protect them and watch over them in troubled situations and amid life’s dangers.”

Some victims groups said that Benedict’s remarks did not go far enough.

In a statement, the lay Catholic group BishopAccountability.org, which is based in the United States, called the pope’s remarks “a great disappointment and a squandered opportunity.”

It called on the pope to “endorse and facilitate certain external measures that would increase transparency and advance justice,” including posting all abuse cases handled by the Vatican on the Vatican Web site and ordering “his bishops to cooperate fully with secular investigations, not oppose them.”

The Vatican has said it advised bishops to cooperate with the authorities in countries where required by law. But in recent years many bishops have said they had not understood how to proceed.

Yet the pope’s remarks on Friday seemed to signal a growing awareness of the extent of the crisis. They came weeks after the pope had said in Portugal that the greatest threat to the church came from “the sin inside the church” rather than from outside and added that “forgiveness is not a substitute for justice.”

In March, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, dismissed as an “attack” media reports questioning the pope’s role in handling abuse as archbishop of Munich in 1980 and as prefect of the Vatican’s doctrinal office.

On Thursday, it said in a front-page editorial that “the infidelity, even profound, of some priests in some parts of the world has in fact cast a shadow over the credibility of the church in the eyes of many people.”

“The wound will take time to heal and nothing will be as if nothing had happened,” it added.

In St. Peter’s Square on Friday, the Rev. Innocent Jooji, a priest from Abuja, Nigeria, said he welcomed the pope’s remarks on the sexual abuse crisis and wished he would say more. “This is not only the problem of the West, it is a global problem,” Father Jooji said.

“He should go around to a few continents to talk about sex abuse, and the impact would be more,” he added, referring to Benedict. “It’s a problem to face. We need more conversation.”