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	Protests to Greet Pope Montreal Gazette September 11, 2010 http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Protests+greet+pope/3509193/story.html Pope Benedict XVI is expecting large-scale protests during his visit to Britain next week in which officials said yesterday he may meet 10 victims of sex abuse. A coalition of protest groups angered at the widening sex abuse scandal engulfing the Roman Catholic Church is planning a major rally during the first state visit to Britain by a pope since the Reformation from Sept. 16 to 19, but the Vatican said it was "not worried." "The media echo is greater than the reality of the situation," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said. He said "reliable polls ... show a great interest (among Britons) in Pope Benedict XVI's visit." "There are always demonstrations, even during other trips. In this particular case, the movement will be bigger because in the United Kingdom there are more atheist or anti-pope groups," Lombardi said. "This is the normal climate of a pluralist society like Britain's." Various anti-pope groups -including rights activists, secularists, humanists and pro-abortion campaigners -have formed a coalition called Protest the Pope and a march is scheduled for Sept. 18 in London from Hyde Park to Downing St. During the trip the Pope could meet with 10 people who were victims of abuse by priests, said Jack Valero, spokesman of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. The venue for the meetings would likely be London, the spokesman said. The 10 victims, all of them British, would remain anonymous. Lombardi said he could not confirm that a meeting would take place. "The pope has already met with abuse victims, but (the meetings) were never announced," he said. "They come about in a discreet manner, because events of this kind should not be surrounded by hype that might not be appreciated by those taking part" in the meeting. Pope Benedict met with victims of abuse during his trip to Australia and the United States in 2008 as well as in Malta last April. The church has been rocked by a string of recent abuse scandals involving priests, with revelations of the sexual abuse of minors and cover-ups in Europe and North America. Yesterday the Belgian church released searing testimony gathered from victims of abuse; 13 of them had committed suicide. In mid-July, the Vatican put in place tougher rules on the handling of sex abuse cases, saying it would accelerate internal investigations and extend by a decade the statute of limitations in such cases. The trip to Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Birmingham is the first state visit by a pope since England's King Henry VIII broke with the church of Rome in 1534. John Paul II in 1982 was the first pope to set foot in the country since the rupture, but the Vatican says that was a pastoral visit, thus not a state visit.
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