Papal trip challenges Catholics on abuse

NEW YORK (AP) - The clergy sex abuse scandal had exhausted American Catholics.
After six years of painful revelations about guilty priests, apologies to victims, reforms and massive settlements, many hoped the issue could wither and fade into the background.
But Pope Benedict XVI's focus on the problem in his first papal visit to the U.S. - seen most dramatically in his private meeting with victims - showed that the spiritual leader of the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics believes his church still has healing to do.
There is already one tangible impact. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said dozens of new people have come forward in the last few days to say they were molested as children. Many told the Survivors Network they were drawn by the pope's remarks.
Teresa Kettelkamp, who oversees child protection programs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, had been cautioning church leaders against "issue fatigue" on abuse. Kettelkamp said she expects more people to come forward with claims in the coming months because of Benedict's actions.
The pope's visit has now made it impossible to play down the problem, she said.
"The fact that he mentioned the issue on the plane on the way over here and has continued to mention it nearly every time he's spoken - it's just so much on the radar now for all of us," Kettelkamp said Sunday, the final day of Benedict's trip.
Many Catholics feared the scandal would overshadow Benedict's message to Americans. But it was the pope who made the problem a centerpiece of his visit.
Benedict did address many other issues, including immigration rights, terrorism, human rights and, of course, Catholic faith and practice. He was met with an enthusiasm that spread among the general public, who lined the streets by the hundreds to see him.
But the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said that the pope had made the abuse scandal a core theme of the entire trip, "to give hope to the church in the United States."
Before his plane from Rome had landed Tuesday in Washington, he said that he was "deeply ashamed" of the scandal and pledged to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood.
He later told the nation's bishops that the problem had sometimes been very "badly handled" - an indirect but clear papal admonition. The bishops had a "God-given duty" to reach out with compassion to victims, he said.
Benedict then took a step that no other pope is believed to have taken. He met privately with five people who had been molested by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, where the long-simmering problem erupted in 2002 and spread nationwide.

Courtesy:aol.in

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