By Sarah Harlan
WFIE
March 29, 2010
http://www.14wfie.com/Global/story.asp?S=12218421
VATICAN CITY -- The Catholic church began this holy week under a cloud of suspicion with more claims of sexual abuse by priests and more accusations that the leaders of the church ignored those claims.
The accusations reach all the way to Pope Benedict.
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The majesty of the Catholic church was on display in St. Peter's Square Sunday morning, with the Palm Sunday mass commemorating Jesus Christ's triumphant arrival into Jerusalem, the first in a week of events focused on Christ's death and resurrection.
Catholics and the curious looked for a memory, while the world watched for a sign that the pope would acknowledge the global crisis of sexual abuse by some of its priests.
"It is a major story and headline and it dogs the church wherever it goes," Scott Appleby with the University of Notre Dame said. "Therefore, the church has to restore credibility in the eyes, the minds, the hearts of Catholics and other people."
One tourist, Rob, is in Rome with his fiancée Anastasia.
He studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
He is not a Catholic, but he said his positive experiences with priests at that Catholic school outweigh the negative headlines.
"I see those as acts of individuals rather than being institutional acts," Rob said.
For three other American college students, all Catholic, it is more difficult.
"If it's true, then I think it's terrible because these are people that we're supposed to trust and supposed to follow, and they're supposed to lead us," one of the students said.
Catholics believe the pope is infallible, but even he is not immune from this scandal.
Benedict's handling of two cases involving pedophile priests before he became pope have critics accusing him of being part of the problem, looking the other way instead of punishing the priests.
The pope did not address the criticism or the issue at mass.
Saturday night, the church's spokesperson said the church must acknowledge and make amends for the decades old abuse, that its response is crucial to its credibility, but Sunday morning, the world was still waiting to hear from Pope Benedict.
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