By John F. Burns
New York Times
September 19, 2010
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_16114076
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| Pope Benedict XVI greets crowds after visiting a senior home in London on Saturday. |
LONDON — On a day when he faced the largest protests of his four-day state visit to Britain, Pope Benedict XVI used an address at a Mass in Westminster Cathedral on Saturday to reiterate his "deep sorrow" for the "unspeakable crimes" of child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church.
The pope's remarks followed others in recent times in which he has struck an increasingly remorseful tone about the abuse scandal.
But they took on an added weight by being made before 2,000 worshipers in the cathedral that is the seat of Catholicism in England, and ahead of a protest march on a scale rare in the recent history of the papacy.
"Above all, I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes," he said, "along with my hope that the power of Christ's grace, his sacrifice of reconciliation, will bring deep healing and peace to their lives. I also acknowledge, with you, the shame and humiliation which all of us have suffered because of these sins."
Police officers put the total number of marchers at the protest's height at about 10,000, and march organizers offered similar estimates.
The marchers comprised groups hostile to the pope and his policies on the role of women in the church; abortion and contraception; homosexuality; and, above all, his handling of the child-abuse revelations that have rocked the church.
Speeches and banners made personal attacks on Benedict and what the marchers described as his inadequate response to the scandal.
One speaker, Terry Sanderson, described him as "the enemy of children, the enemy of gay people and the enemy of women."
The abuse scandal continued to cast a broad shadow on the visit, the first by a pope to Britain since Pope John Paul II was greeted by tumultuous crowds in 1982. Many in the papal entourage seemed encouraged that it had gone as well as it has.
In his last public address in London, the pope spoke to the tens of thousands who attended a prayer vigil in Hyde Park, many of them carrying candles flickering in the evening wind.
He offered a wistful reflection on the buffeting that church leaders face in what the pontiff has described on other occasions as an age of "aggressive secularism."
"In our time," he said, "the price to be paid for fidelity to the gospel is no longer being hanged, drawn and quartered, but it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied."
From the Westminster Mass, Benedict went directly to a private meeting with five victims of clerical sexual abuse, four of them women and one a man.
Also Saturday, Scotland Yard said that searches of premises connected with six men suspected of plotting an attack on the pontiff had not turned up anything in the way of weapons or explosives. All of the men were released by early today.
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