By Daniel Burke and Adelle M. Banks
c. 2008 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI told the nation’s Catholic bishops Wednesday (April 16) that they must heal the “enormous pain” caused by the clergy sexual abuse scandal by ministering to victims, guiding demoralized priests and confronting sexual immorality in the wider culture.
“It is your God-given responsibility as pastors to bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust, to foster healing, to promote reconciliation and to reach out to those so seriously wronged,” Benedict said.
More than 350 cardinals and bishops attended the evening Vespers service in the crypt of the Basilica of the National Shrine to hear the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics deliver his most sweeping comments to date on the sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. church.
While Benedict touched on a wide range of topics, from a “quiet attrition” within the U.S. Catholic Church to a decline in new priests, he devoted substantial time in his sharply worded speech to address the “deep shame” of the sex scandal.
It was the second time in as many days that the pope has spoken on the issue, one that many U.S. Catholics had hoped — but few expected — would be a major theme of his first U.S. trip.
Nearly 14,000 abuse claims have been filed against Catholic clergy since 1950, according to church figures, and the fallout has cost the U.S. church more than $2 billion and bankrupted six dioceses.
Addressing the pope, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the scandal was “sometimes very badly handled by bishops.”
Benedict agreed, but cast the scandal in a wider lens, which he said should prompt the bishops to “address the sin of abuse within the wider context of sexual mores.”
“What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?” he asked.
Moreover, the pope acknowledged that many priests feel isolated and shamed by the scandal.
“At this stage a vital part of your task is to strengthen relationships with your clergy, especially cases where tension has arisen between priests and their bishops in the wake of the crisis,”
Benedict said.
David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said words — even those of the pope — have “very limited effect.”
“We’ve not seen the Vatican punish any complicit church employee, from a church janitor to a bishop,” Clohessy said in an interview before Benedict’s address to the bishops.
At the basilica, Benedict’s sharpest remarks came in response to advance questions from the bishops.
Speaking to a church that, according to a recent survey, loses one out of every three members, the pope said: “Do people today find it difficult to encounter God in our churches? Has our preaching lost its salt?”
Asked about the dearth of young priests, Benedict said, “Let us be quite frank: The ability to cultivate vocations to the priesthood and the religious life is a sure sign of the health of a local church.”
Earlier Wednesday, Benedict was met at the White House in grand style by President Bush with an ornate ceremony that featured thousands of onlookers who greeted the pope by singing “Happy Birthday.”
Benedict, smiling as he opened his arms to an adoring crowd of some 9,000 well-wishers, said he came “as a guest of all Americans.”
Bush clearly reveled in the pomp and circumstance of only the second papal visit to the White House, and thanked Benedict for spending his 81st birthday in America.
“Birthdays are traditionally spent with close friends, so our entire nation is moved and honored that you’ve decided to share this special day with us,” Bush said.
After the 45-minute welcome ceremony, which included a 21-gun salute customary for a foreign head of state, Bush and Benedict met in the Oval Office, where they discussed terrorism, global poverty, immigration and the Middle East.
A joint statement from the White House and the Holy See said the two men “reaffirmed their total rejection of terrorism as well as the manipulation of religion to justify immoral and violent acts against innocents.”
They also discussed “the defense and promotion of life, matrimony and the family,” the “precarious state” of Christian minorities in Iraq, and poverty and disease in Africa.
In his public remarks at the White House, Benedict mentioned the need for “global solidarity” and “patient efforts of international diplomacy to resolve conflicts and promote progress” — a veiled reference to the Vatican’s earlier push for more negotiations before the U.S. launched its war against Iraq.
Benedict left the White House in the popemobile to travel for a luncheon at the Vatican embassy with U.S. cardinals. Outside the embassy, a group of victims of clergy sexual abuse released their list of “America’s Worst Cardinals” who they said had failed to stop the abuse scandal.
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