USA Today
December 20, 2010
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/12/pope-church-must-reflect-on-what-allowed-sexual-abuse-cases/1
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| Pope Benedict XVI shakes hands with some cardinals during a traditional exchange of Christmas greetings at the Vatican. |
Pope Benedict XVI said today the Catholic Church must reflect on what is wrong with its message and Christian life in general that allowed for the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests.
"We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that transpired," the pope said in his annual Christmas message to the Vatican hierarchy. "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."
Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" that required the church to accept the "humiliation" as a call for renewal.
He said the scandals must be seen in a broader social context, in which child pornography and sexual tourism are rampant, and where as recently as the 1970s, pedophilia wasn't considered the absolute evil that it is today.
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