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	Pope Urges Church to Reflect on Abuse By Rachel Donadio New York Times December 20, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/europe/21pope.html&OQ=_rQ3D1&OP=54879c05Q2FJQ23EQ3CJQ27)UtQ5D))9yJy-Q24-JQ24yJyQ24JQ23)Q5D2Q27JE6Q5D)Q2BEJyQ24Q2B)Q2BE4Q519z2 ROME — Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday that the Catholic Church must reflect on the failures in its message that allowed for the sexual abuse scandal and that the church must find a way to help victims and not ordain potential pedophiles. "We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that transpired. We must ask ourselves what went wrong in our message, in our entire way of being Christians, so that such a thing could have occurred," the pope told the Vatican hierarchy in a pointed Christmas message. Benedict said that that in 2010, abuse cases had reached an "unimaginable dimension." In recent months, investigations in Ireland, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have found that clerics had sexually abused children in the past and the church hierarchy was often found to have covered up the abuse. Victims have accused the Vatican of not acting decisively and swiftly enough to discipline errant priests and of using complex bureaucracy and uneven application of church law to protect priests over children. Earlier this month, the Vatican published a letter from 1988 that it said showed that Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's doctrinal office in charge of handling abuse, had sought ways for swifter punishment for errant priests. At the time, he was unsuccessful. After an abuse scandal erupted in the United States in 2002, the Vatican introduced fast-track norms for punishing errant priests, and bishops in the United States introduced a zero-tolerance policy, in which priests are suspended at the first accusation of abuse. But victims have called that too little, too late. The Vatican has said it is working on a series of guidelines for bishops around the world advising them how to handle abuse cases, including reporting abuse to civil authorities in countries where it is required. In his remarks on Monday, the pope also thanked "the many good clerics," but focused on ways the church needed to change. "We are aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and our corresponding responsibility," the pope said. But he added that the scandal should be seen "in the context of our times." He said that as recently as the 1970s, pedophilia wasn't considered as grave as it is today, and that today there is also a market in child pornography and sex tourism that some consider "normal" and yet that should also be condemned.
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