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	Catholic Church 'Disfigured' By Janelle de Souza Triniday and Tobago's Newsday March 29, 2010 http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,118135.html As protestors in Europe clamour for Pope Benedict XVI to resign over a clerical sex abuse scandal, a local Roman Catholic priest yesterday urged his congregation to mourn not only for the victims, most of them children, but also for the "disfigured church". "Mourn for the victims who have felt betrayed by the priests who have perpetrated the crime, not understanding the reason why these priests have done what they did," Father Kenneth Assing, declared in his Palm Sunday homily at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Port-of- Spain yesterday. Assing said the scandal, which intensified yesterday into a protest at Westminster Cathedral, London, England, where protestors demanded that the Pope step down, has shown that the Catholic Church has been betrayed by its own priests. "They have betrayed, not only the victims, but the church and this has made us understand that the church is at one time holy and sinful. As a sinful church we are struggling and journeying towards holiness," Assing preached. The congregation's role is to be like Peter, a disciple, who according to the tradition of the Catholic Church, became the first pope, and the women of Jerusalem when the disfigured Jesus Christ was to be crucified, that is to engage in grief and sorrow when good is being disfigured, despised and betrayed, he said. Assing explained that when one weeps, it is a cry for restoration. Therefore, every individual should weep for themself because of the loss of the sense of being a child of God, as well as to weep for any lost relationship with God. Addressing the increasing cases of violent crimes involving youths locally, Assing called on young people to listen attentively to their elders when they speak of days gone by. "Don't dismiss them when they talk about their lives long ago," he said, even as he encouraged the congregation, especially young, to not become numb toward violent crimes. "Right now people are hurting in our country and crying out for help but you young ones live in a time of crime and violence and have become numb to it. When you hear these stories, weep for it, cry out against it, do not remain numb. "However you have been disfigured in your lives, however we have betrayed all that is good and gracious, however we have betrayed the holiness of life, rather than being faithful, to sin, let us mourn and weep for the holiness that we have lost in our church, community, family and in our respective lives," he concluded. The local priest's appeal for restoration comes amid an international campaign of condemnation of the Pope's role in what is being described as a cover-up of reports of child sex abuse by priests before his election as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope has been accused of being complicit in protecting priests from prosecution in child sex abuses cases while he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Allegations involving priests have surfaced in Ireland, the United States, Italy, Germany and several other European countries. Recently, the church in Brazil stated it was investigating similar claims against five priests. In this past month, such allegations led to the resignation of Bishop John Magee, an aide to three popes before being assigned to Ireland, who was found to have mishandled allegations of clerical sex abuse in his County Cork diocese. In the US and Italy, the church has been strongly criticised for the handling of reports of abuse against deaf boys and girls in separate cases. According to the BBC, there were two major reports on child sex abuse cases showing "cover-ups and hierarchical failings involving thousands of victims, and stretching back decades", before the fresh scandal broke out this past month. "In one, four Dublin archbishops were found to have effectively turned a blind eye to cases of abuse from 1975 to 2004. The Dublin archdiocese, it said, operated in a culture of concealment, placing the integrity of its institutions above the welfare of the children in its care." The four bishops resigned. The second report, compiled after a nine-year investigation, "documented some six decades of physical, sexual and emotional abuse at residential institutions run by 18 religious orders". Then earlier this month, it was reported that the head of the Irish Catholic Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, was present at meetings in 1975 where children signed vows of silence over complaints against a paedophile priest, Fr Brendan Smyth. Cardinal Brady resisted calls to resign and issued an apology. It was subsequent to this that Bishop Magee resigned and the Pope issued a letter, in which he apologised to victims in Ireland. In the aftermath of this, cases in the US emerged, shaking up the church there which has previously been criticised for the handling of reports of abuse in the archdiocese of Boston in the 1990s. In the newest allegations this month, documents suggest that the Pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, "failed to respond to letters from US clergy about cases of alleged child sex abuse by a priest in Wisconsin". "Archbishops had complained about Fr Lawrence Murphy in 1996 to a Vatican office led by the future Pope, but apparently received no response. Fr Murphy, who died in 1998, is suspected of having abused some 200 boys at St John's School for the Deaf in St Francis, Wisconsin, between 1950 and 1974. One of his alleged victims told the BBC the Pope had known for years about the accusations yet failed to take action." Since the start of 2010, at least 300 people have made allegations of sexual or physical abuse by priests across the Pope's home country, Germany. The Pope's brother Monsignor Georg Ratzinger is also accused of turning a blind eye to accusations of abuse within the Regensburg Domspatzen school boys' choir which he directed for 30 years. "The Regensburg diocese confirmed on March 22 new allegations of child sexual abuse against four priests and two nuns, saying most of the incidents occurred in the 1970s. "Two days later the German government announced it was forming a committee of experts to investigate all the abuse claims," reports the BBC. And in Italy, a number of deaf men have come forward to say they were abused as children at the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf in the northern city of Verona between the 1950s and the 1980s.
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