Pope Benedict, celebrating a stadium Mass for 45 000 people, acknowledged on Thursday that the United States paedophile priests scandal caused ”indescribable pain and harm” to victims but asked Catholics to love their pastors.
For the third consecutive day of his trip to the US, Benedict mentioned the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in 2002 and cost US dioceses $2-billion in damages, demonstrating his resolve to deal with the issue and make sure it does not happen again.
”No words of mine can describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” he said in the sermon of a Mass at Nationals Park, a new stadium in Washington, DC, hosting its first non-baseball event.
Advertisements flanking the scoreboard were covered by US flags. A large yellow and white papal flag fluttered in left field and a papal seal covered home plate as the pope said Mass from an altar platform in centre field.
The pope arrived in Washington on Tuesday on his first visit to the US as pontiff.
”It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the church,” he said during Mass, which included four choirs totalling 570 singers.
But he said great efforts had been made to deal ”honestly and fairly” with the aftermath of the scandal, which broke when it was discovered that priests who had abused children were transferred instead of being defrocked or turned over to police.
Speaking from a towering white and gold altar platform, he asked US Catholics to foster healing and reconciliation with victims and added: ”Also, I ask you to love your priests, and to affirm them in the excellent work that they do.”
The church’s position has always been that an extremely small number of priests — less than 1% — were abusers, while the overwhelming majority were faithful to their vocation and protected children.
Victims demand action
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) issued a statement before the Mass, saying it wanted more action from the pope.
”Despite twice making brief remarks about the church’s ongoing child sex-abuse and cover-up scandal, we’ve still seen no action. Not one child is safer today because of what the pope said,” said Barbara Dorris, of Snap.
Bill Fay, a Catholic from Rockville, Maryland, who attended the Mass, said the scandal had not shaken his faith and that he had decided to keep his children in Catholic schools. But he was critical of the way the church handled the crisis. ”They did a fairly good job of attempting to sweep it under the rug,” he said.
The Mass gave Washington a chance to show off its new, $611-million baseball field, which opened two weeks ago.
In his sermon the pope, who wore red, white and gold vestments, again praised American society but said not everyone had gotten a piece of the American dream in the past.
”To be sure, this promise was not experienced by all the inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the Native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves,” he said.
He also lamented ”clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of society: signs of alienation, anger and polarisation on the part of many of our contemporaries; increased violence; a weakening of the moral sense; a coarsening of social relations and a growing forgetfulness of God”.
Later on Thursday the pope, who turned 81 on Wednesday and was feted at the White House, was to address heads of Catholic universities and schools and meet leaders of other religions.
He goes to New York on Friday to address the United Nations. He returns to Rome on Sunday after visiting the site where the World Trade Centre was destroyed in the hijacked plane attacks of September 11 2001, and saying Mass at Yankee Stadium. — Reuters