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	The Pope Confronts the Priest Sex Scandal By Alex Kingsbury U.S. News & World Report April 18, 2008 http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/04/18/the-pope-confronts-the-priest-sex-scandal.html After years of near silence on the issue of the abuse and rape of children at the hands of pedophile priests, Pope Benedict XVI made public acknowledgement of the scandal a central theme of his first visit to the United States as head of the church. The first mention of the scandal came while still en route from Rome when he told reporters he was "deeply ashamed" about the scandal that had caused "great suffering." It was the first time the papacy had directly addressed the victims of abusive clerics, and it signaled that Benedict's first trip to the United States as pontiff would be not just a state visit but an effort at reconciliation with American believers and an exercise in humility for the church's role in a scandal the pope conceded had been "very badly handled." ... "We've never before heard this type of honesty from the pope about what actually happened, and that's clearly a very encouraging sign — but talk is only as good as the actions that follow it up," said Dan Bartley, president of the Boston-based Voice of the Faithful, a group formed in the wake of the scandal to push for greater transparency and lay involvement in the management of the church. The group took out a full page advertisement in the New York Times in anticipation of the pope's visit calling for the pontiff to meet with victims of pedophilia and the removal of bishops responsible for covering up abuse or transferring known pedophiles within the ministry.
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