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  'It Is a Mistake to Confuse the Pope and the Church'

By Austen Ivereigh
Scotsman
April 5, 2010

http://news.scotsman.com/world/39It-is-a-mistake-to.6203224.jp

VATICAN CITY -- IN his Urbi et Orbi Easter message, Pope Benedict XVI prayed for persecuted Christians in Pakistan, for an end to conflicts in Congo and Nigeria, and for earthquake victims in Haiti and Chile. Yet the victims that Catholics were thinking of this Easter were those who, decades ago, suffered sexual abuse at the hands of priests.

Their Crucifixion was prolonged by the failure of many bishops to act against the perpetrators; their wounds are still visible in broken relationships and depression. It seems at first glance disappointing that the Church's mishandling of sexual abuse went unmentioned in the many liturgies which the Pope led over Easter.

But it is easy to make the mistake of confusing Pope and Church. It is in the local Catholic Church – the Church in the UK, the Church in Ireland and Germany – that the failures occurred, and it is there that mistakes must be faced and the process of healing take place in.

Does this mean the Vatican has nothing to do with it? No. The fault for the delays in laicising priests convicted of abuse in the 1990s lay with Rome. But it was Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, who radically speeded up the defrocking process in 2001, and who ensured that bishops were acting swiftly against abusive priests. As Pope, he has continued to ensure that local bishops act swiftly and decisively – which is why he called the entire Irish hierarchy to Rome in March and followed that with a detailed pastoral letter to the Irish people.

As more and more abuse victims step forward across central Europe, Pope Benedict will need to do more and say more. But for him to have done so at Easter would have risked giving the wrong message – that the responsibility for mishandling the abuse cases rested firstly with Rome. And it would have risked drowning out the more important messages that bishops need to give in each diocese where the failures occurred.

• Austen Ivereigh is a former public affairs director to Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor and author of 'Faithful Citizens'

 
 

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