By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – In his letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI
promised to meet victims of clerical sexual abuse but the Vatican said
it would not turn such a meeting into a media event.
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – In his letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI
promised to meet victims of clerical sexual abuse but the Vatican said
it would not turn such a meeting into a media event.
Like similar meetings the Pope has had with victims in the United States
and in Australia, a potential meeting with Irish victims would occur
quietly and in an atmosphere of prayer without a public announcement
ahead of time, said Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman.
“For the Pope, these are not media events. They are human and spiritual
encounters. While they are significant, you should not expect them to be
announced and propagandised,” Fr Lombardi told reporters on 20 March
during a briefing on the Pope’s letter.
The spokesman also announced that the Vatican had opened on its website a
new page – http://www.vatican.va/resources/index_en.htm# – with the
text of the Pope’s letter, past papal speeches touching on sexual abuse
and related documents.
Directly addressing victims in his letter, Pope Benedict wrote, “I
humbly ask you to consider what I have said.”
Fr Lombardi said the Pope’s words make it clear that he understands
their hurt and how hard it could be for them to trust Church leaders. He
said the Pope is not acting as “a teacher trying to impose a lesson,”
but is asking for a chance to apologise on behalf of the Church and help
promote healing.
The release of the Pope’s letter to Irish Catholics came in the midst of
new revelations about clerical sexual abuse of minors in Germany,
Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Asked why the Pope did not use the opportunity to address clerical
sexual abuse globally, Fr Lombardi said Pope Benedict wanted to speak
directly to Irish Catholics as they deal with a series of cases that
have been the object of two separate independent inquiries and very
public reflection by the Bishops’ conference as a whole.
“Obviously, the way the Pope addresses the victims, the guilty or the
Bishops” in the Irish letter is applicable beyond Ireland, Fr Lombardi
said.
But this letter was meant to be pastoral and specific, and an attempt to
address the global situation risked making the document “generic, banal
or 250 pages long,” he said.
In the letter, Pope Benedict announced “an apostolic visitation of
certain dioceses in Ireland, as well as seminaries and Religious
congregations.”
Fr Lombardi said details about who will be in charge of the visitation,
what dioceses will be visited and the precise scope and timetable for
the visitation would be announced in the future.
He said, however, that a visitation usually indicates Church leaders
believe there is a situation “in which it seems local governance has
been inadequate”.
Asked about Pope Benedict’s responsibility for the way the Church has
handled sex abuse allegations, particularly when he was head of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fr Lombardi said the Pope
was “a model of the search for coherence.”
His term as Prefect of the doctrinal congregation was “a time not of
covering up or hiding the issues, but of an increasingly clear and
decisive commitment to bringing them to light and dealing with them,” Fr
Lombardi said.