POPE BENEDICT XVI, celebrating the closure of the Catholic Church’s “Year For Priests” yesterday, once again asked for forgiveness for the sins of those priests involved in paedophile crimes.
Speaking to thousands of priests attending a special Mass in a sweltering St Peter’s Square yesterday morning, the pope addressed the controversial issue of clerical child abuse, an issue that has consistently marred the Year For Priests celebrations.
He said: “And so it happened that in this very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light – particularly the abuse of the little ones, in which the priesthood, whose task is to manifest God’s concern for our good, turns into its very opposite.
“We too insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again; and that in admitting men to priestly ministry and in their formation we will do everything we can to weigh the authenticity of their vocation . . .”
The pope suggested that “even amid human weakness”, God makes his love “concretely present in this world”, urging priests to “look upon all that happened as a summons to purification”.
The pope also appeared to promise tough action, saying that the church “must use the Shepherd’s rod”, adding: “The use of the rod can actually be a service of love. Today we can see that it has nothing to do with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life is tolerated.”
Not everyone was impressed by the pope’s apology, with US lobby group Bishop Accountability arguing that Pope Benedict had missed an opportunity to “admit his own culpability”, to finally “account for the hierarchy’s role in the brutal violation of thousands of children worldwide” and “to support actions by secular authorities that would help solve the crisis”.
It added: “In his remarks in Portugal in May and in his Irish letter, Benedict had seemed to signal willingness to address at last the complicity of church leaders.
“But today, once again, the pope focused only on wayward priests, and he once again minimised the sodomising and abuse of helpless children by calling it a ‘sin’.
“He said nothing about the core problem: the Vatican’s policies and corrupt culture that encouraged bishops worldwide to cover up thousands of child sex crimes.”
Yesterday’s solemn Mass was the second major Year For Priests ceremony presided over by Pope Benedict in Rome this week. On Thursday night, in another open- air service in St Peter’s Square, he held a public dialogue with four handpicked priests.
When one of them expressed his perplexity about the teaching of priestly celibacy, Benedict replied that “celibacy is a gift from the Lord . . . which represents a major scandal for agnostics since it is the total opposite of not getting married, which is so fashionable today”.
Despite the enthusiastic presence of an estimated 15,000 of the church’s 400,000 priests in Rome this week, even the Vatican’s official voice, the daily L’Osservatore Romano, felt obliged to make reference to the clerical sex abuse scandals in an editorial dedicated to the Year For Priests.
It commented: “The wound will take time to heal and it can never be as if nothing has happened. Some people have spoken of an ‘Anno Horribilis’, but in reality this was a year of grace . . . because this testing time has also provided the chance for growth.”
Notwithstanding Pope Benedict’s resolute defence of priestly celibacy this week, the issue continues to prompt debate among Catholics.