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Pope admits failures in abuse cases
Source: Agencies |
September 17, 2010, Friday
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POPE Benedict XVI began a controversial visit to Britain yesterday by acknowledging the Catholic Church had not acted decisively or quickly enough against priests who molested children. He said the church's top priority now was to help abuse victims heal.
The pope's comments to reporters traveling with him from Rome marked his most thorough admission to date of church failures to stop pedophile priests, but they again failed to satisfy victims' groups. The issue has reignited with recent revelations of hundreds of victims in Belgium, including at least 13 of whom committed suicide.
Benedict's four-day state visit has been overshadowed by disgust over the abuse scandal and indifference in highly secular Britain, where Catholics are a minority at 10 percent and endured centuries of bloody persecution until the early 1800s.
The pope's first meeting was with Queen Elizabeth II, both head of state and head of the Church of England, at The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The trip is the first state visit by a pope to the UK.
The British media has been particularly hostile to the pope's visit, noting its 12-million-pound (US$18.7 million) security cost to British taxpayers at a time of austerity measures and job losses.
There also remains strong opposition in the UK to Benedict's hard line against homosexuality, abortion and using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Benedict acknowledged the opposition in his airborne comments to reporters, saying Britain had a "great history of anti-Catholicism. But it is also a country with a great history of tolerance."
Asked about polls that suggest many Catholics had lost trust in the church as a result of the sex abuse scandals, Benedict said he was shocked and saddened about the scope of the abuse, in part because priests take vows to be Christ's voice upon ordination.
"It's difficult to understand how a man who has said this could then fall into this perversion. It's a great sadness," Benedict said in Italian. "It's also sad that the authority of the church wasn't sufficiently vigilant, and not sufficiently quick or decisive to take necessary measures" to stop it.
He said victims were the church's top priority as it tries to help them heal spiritually and psychologically.
He didn't take individual personal responsibility, saying only that the "authority of the church" had failed.
The main US victim's group dismissed Benedict's comments as disingenuous, noting that the only real action the Vatican has taken has been to tell bishops to report abuse to police if local laws require them to do so.
The pope's comments to reporters traveling with him from Rome marked his most thorough admission to date of church failures to stop pedophile priests, but they again failed to satisfy victims' groups. The issue has reignited with recent revelations of hundreds of victims in Belgium, including at least 13 of whom committed suicide.
Benedict's four-day state visit has been overshadowed by disgust over the abuse scandal and indifference in highly secular Britain, where Catholics are a minority at 10 percent and endured centuries of bloody persecution until the early 1800s.
The pope's first meeting was with Queen Elizabeth II, both head of state and head of the Church of England, at The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The trip is the first state visit by a pope to the UK.
The British media has been particularly hostile to the pope's visit, noting its 12-million-pound (US$18.7 million) security cost to British taxpayers at a time of austerity measures and job losses.
There also remains strong opposition in the UK to Benedict's hard line against homosexuality, abortion and using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Benedict acknowledged the opposition in his airborne comments to reporters, saying Britain had a "great history of anti-Catholicism. But it is also a country with a great history of tolerance."
Asked about polls that suggest many Catholics had lost trust in the church as a result of the sex abuse scandals, Benedict said he was shocked and saddened about the scope of the abuse, in part because priests take vows to be Christ's voice upon ordination.
"It's difficult to understand how a man who has said this could then fall into this perversion. It's a great sadness," Benedict said in Italian. "It's also sad that the authority of the church wasn't sufficiently vigilant, and not sufficiently quick or decisive to take necessary measures" to stop it.
He said victims were the church's top priority as it tries to help them heal spiritually and psychologically.
He didn't take individual personal responsibility, saying only that the "authority of the church" had failed.
The main US victim's group dismissed Benedict's comments as disingenuous, noting that the only real action the Vatican has taken has been to tell bishops to report abuse to police if local laws require them to do so.
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