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	Pilgrims React to Pope Scandal By Kelly Heffernan-tabor Digtriad April 2, 2010 http://www.digtriad.com/news/national_world/article.aspx?storyid=139856&catid=175 Jerusalem, Israel -- Christian pilgrims walking the Via Dolorsa on Good Friday in Jerusalem's Old City reacted to the latest scandal involving the Catholic church as the Pope is being accused for an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests. "Well, the Pope, has got nothing to do with this. Some priests, as in any other religion, they can get out of their vocation. But we have to forgive them and we have to pray for the victims as well," John, a pilgrim from Malta said. "About the scandal of the Pope, I am a bit cautious, because the Pope is giving his opinion to the world that he is suffering all the consequences that the people are giving to him. And he is quiet, he is going to tell the world that everything is going to be all right, normal," another pilgrim from Malta said near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after walking the "Way of the Cross". A top legal official in the Vatican said on Thursday that Pope Benedict, accused by victims' lawyers of being ultimately responsible for the cover-up, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state. The interview with Giuseppe dalla Torre, head of the Vatican's tribunal, was published in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper as Pope Benedict led Holy Thursday services in St Peter's Basilica and Catholics marked the most solemn week of the liturgical calendar, culminating on Sunday, Easter Day. In the morning the pope blessed oils for Church services during the year, and in the evening in the Rome basilica of St John's in Lateran he washed the feet of 12 priests to commemorate Jesus' gesture of humility the night before he died. But on the day Catholics commemorate Christ's founding of the priesthood, the pope did not refer in any of his sermons to the crisis of confidence sweeping the Church as almost daily revelations surface of sexual abuse of children in the past, accompanied by allegations of a cover-up. Lawyers representing victims of sexual abuse by priests in several cases in the United States have said they would want the pope to testify in an attempt to try to prove the Vatican was negligent. But the pope is protected by diplomatic immunity because more than 170 countries, including the United States, have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. They recognize it as a sovereign state and the pope as its sovereign head. Dalla Torre rejected suggestions that U.S. bishops, some of whom have been accused of moving molesters from parish to parish instead of turning them in to police, could be considered Vatican employees, making their "boss" ultimately responsible.
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