Pope Begins U.S. Visit; Says He Is Ashamed of Sex Scandal
By JOHN HOLUSHA and IAN FISHER
Published: April 16, 2008


Pope Benedict XVI landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Tuesday afternoon, beginning a six-day visit after a flight in which he told reporters aboard his aircraft that he was “deeply ashamed” of the Roman Catholic Church’s child sexual-abuse scandal in the United States.

The pope, who turns 81 on Wednesday, was greeted at the air base by President Bush, his wife Laura and his daughter Jenna. Cheered by an enthusiastic crowd of invited guests, Pope Benedict shook hands with a line of dignitaries before walking with Mr. Bush into a visitors lounge at the base. A large motorcade under tight security shuttled the pope and his entourage into Washington.

In his first visit to the United States, Benedict is scheduled to make a series of appearances between his arrival and departure on April 20, including a mass at Yankee Stadium and an address before the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The pope began his visit by addressing an issue that has wounded the Catholic Church in the United States, telling reporters on his aircraft that the sexual abuse of children has caused “great suffering” for the church and “me personally.” The scandal has produced thousands of sexual abuse victims and about 5,000 accused priests since it erupted in 2002 and has cost the church more than $2 billion in settlements.

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen,” he said. “As I read the histories of those victims, it is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way. Their mission was to give healing, to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future.”

Apparently drawing a distinction between priests with homosexual tendencies and those inclined to molest children, the pontiff said: “I would not speak at this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, which is another thing. And we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry.”

“Who is guilty of pedophilia cannot be a priest,” he added.
The pope said church officials were going through the seminaries that train would-be priests to make sure that those candidates have no such tendencies. “We’ll do all that is possible to have a strong discernment, because it is more important to have good priests than to have many priests,” he said.

“We hope that we can do, and we have done and will do in the future, all that is possible to heal this wound.”
The pope is not new to issues involving abusive priests. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and was responsible for deciding whether to discipline priests accused of sexual abuse.

He read dossiers on the cases forwarded to him from bishops around the world. Aides said he was deeply distressed reading the accounts of victims whose trust in the church was betrayed by the priests who violated them.

In a homily he gave just before he was elected pope, Cardinal Ratzinger decried the “filth” in the priesthood, which many interpreted as a reference to the abusers. As pope, he ordered the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, to be removed from his ministry and to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penitence. Father Maciel died in January.

But as pope, Benedict has done or said or done little publicly about the abuse issue until now.

Advocates for victims have criticized the church for failing to call to account bishops who allowed abusive priests to remain in the ministry.

Peter Isely, a national board member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that he was glad to hear the pope acknowledge the sexual abuse problem more clearly than before, but that words alone are not enough.

“If you don’t reprimand, discipline and sanction bishops that know about sex crimes against children, then no matter else what you do, you are not getting at where the real problem is,” Mr. Isely said.

Victims advocates are looking for the pope to change canon law to enable dioceses worldwide to remove abusive priests from ministry and eventually the priesthood, a change that was granted to the church in the United States after the scandal broke in 2002.

Pope Praises U.S., but Warns of Secular Challenge
By IAN FISHER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: April 17, 2008

WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House on Wednesday — his 81st birthday — and praised America as a nation where strong religious belief can coexist with secular society. But he later warned that this secular tradition often prevents Americans from living their beliefs fully, accepting divorce, abortion and cohabitation outside of marriage.


“Perhaps America’s brand of secularism poses a particular problem,” he told American bishops here. “It allows for professing belief in God, and respects the public role of religion and the churches, but at the same time can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator.”

“The result is a growing separation of faith from life,” he said.

For the second day, on his first official visit to America, the pope acknowledged the pain caused by the sex abuse scandal that has divided and weakened the American church. He called the behavior of pedophile priests “evil” and agreed that the scandal as it unfolded was “sometimes very badly handled.”

But he said the measures taken to prevent such abuses — measures he said are “bearing fruit” — needed to be put it into “a wider context,” pointing to a society that he said does not always live up to Catholic teaching.

“What does it mean to speak of child protection,” the pope asked, “when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?

“We need to reassess urgently the values underpinning society, so that a sound moral formation can be offered to young people and adults alike,” he said.

His comments to bishops seemed in contrast to the festive and highly celebratory greeting he received at the White House. But his general tone, on a day when he was feted by thousands of flag-waving supporters on the streets of the capital, appeared aimed at challenging more than scolding.

Vatican officials have portrayed this trip as an opportunity to show Americans a fuller picture of the pope, beyond his reputation for doctrinal orthodoxy.

Still, he found fertile ground for his conservative brand of faith in President Bush, who has made his own Christian faith a central tenet of his life as an American politician. Christian conservatives — and, increasingly, Catholics — are a key component of the president’s political base, and the White House has made aggressive efforts to reach out to them.

That was reflected in the crowd of 13,500 who turned out on the South Lawn on Wednesday morning, where the pope was welcomed by a 21-gun salute, a fife and drum band, a soprano who sang the Lord’s Prayer and two rounds of “Happy Birthday.”

The crowd burst into applause when Mr. Bush told the pope that Americans “need your message that all life is sacred,” a reference to the two men’s shared opposition to abortion rights. More obscure, but still significant, the president adopted a phrase of the pope himself when he said the nation needs the pontiff’s “message to reject this dictatorship of relativism.”

The term is considered the defining phrase of the papal election in 2005, in which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, on the day that his fellow cardinals went into the conclave that elected him Pope Benedict XVI, decried the idea that all belief is equally true.

“Here in America you’ll find a nation that welcomes the role of faith in the public square,” the president said. “When our founders declared our nation’s independence, they rested their case on an appeal to the ‘laws of nature, and of nature’s God.’ We believe in religious liberty. We also believe that a love for freedom and a common moral law are written into every human heart, and that these constitute the firm foundation on which any successful free society must be built.”

Dressed in his traditional white cassock and skullcap, the pontiff delivered a message celebrating the greatness of American democracy, as well as the nation’s embrace of religion.