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  Pope's Surprise Visit with Abuse Victims Offers Hope

Dallas Morning News
April 17, 2008

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/stories/041808dnnatpopemeet.3bb3467.html

WASHINGTON Pope Benedict XVI prayed with tearful victims of clergy sex abuse in a chapel Thursday, an extraordinary gesture from a pontiff who has made atoning for the great shame of the U.S. church the cornerstone of his first papal trip to America.

Benedict's third day in the U.S. began with a packed open-air Mass celebrated in 10 languages at a baseball stadium, and it included a speech to Roman Catholic college and university presidents.

But the real drama happened privately, in the chapel of the papal embassy between events.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman, said that Benedict and Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley met with a group of five or six clergy sex abuse victims for about 25 minutes, offering them encouragement and hope.

The victims from Cardinal O'Malley's archdiocese were all adults, men and women, who had been molested when they were minors. Each spoke privately with the pope.

"They prayed together. Also, each of them had their own individual time with the Holy Father," Father Lombardi said. "Some were in tears."

Three of the participants spoke emotionally about the meeting in an interview on CNN.

"I basically told him I was an altar boy in the sacristy praying to God ... and it wasn't just sexual abuse, it was spiritual abuse," said Bernie McDaid. "I told him he had a cancer in his church" that he needed to address.

Victim Olan Horne said the meeting was unscripted and that they were allowed to tell the pope anything they wanted. He said he didn't think he needed another hollow apology from the church, but that the pope showed sincere regret and offered him hope.

"I got up to him and I burst into tears," said another victim, Faith Johnston. "I think my tears alone spoke so much."

Well over 4,000 priests have been accused of molesting minors in the U.S. since 1950. The church has paid out more than $2 billion, much of it in just the last six years, after the case of a serial molester in Boston gained national attention and inspired many victims to step forward. Six dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy because of abuse costs.

Expected to address the problem only once during his six-day trip at a Mass with priests in New York City on Saturday Benedict has instead returned to the issue repeatedly, beginning in a news conference on the flight from Rome to the U.S.

He has called the crisis a cause of "deep shame," pledged to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood and decried the "enormous pain" that communities have suffered from such "gravely immoral behavior" by priests.

Father Lombardi said Thursday's meeting was believed to be the first-ever such session between a pope and abuse victims.

Gary Bergeron, an outspoken abuse survivor from Boston who was not in the meeting, failed in his attempt to meet with Pope John Paul II, Benedict's predecessor, when he spent a week at the Vatican a few years ago. He called Thursday's meeting "a long-sought-for step in the right direction."

"The Catholic Church is partly based on symbolism, and I think the symbolism had he not met with survivors would have been horrendous," the 45-year-old Mr. Bergeron said.

Some victims had called on Benedict to travel to Boston since it has been the epicenter of the problem. Instead, Cardinal O'Malley presented the pope with a notebook listing the names victims of sexual abuse from the Boston Archdiocese. There were more than 1,000 names, Father Lombardi said.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called the meeting "a positive first step on a very long road." The group, which has been fiercely critical of the church, said it hopes the meeting will lead to reform.

"It's easy to give a sermon about this," said Terry McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org of Massachusetts. "It's a little harder to face a victim who's been raped by one of your employees and listen to him and say you're sorry. But the really hard part comes when you start doing something about it."

 
 

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