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	Pope Has Private Lunch with Bishops to Mark Fifth Anniversary By Richard Owen The Times April 19, 2010 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7102263.ece Pope Benedict XVI marked the fifth anniversary of his election with a private lunch at the Vatican for 60 cardinals, telling them he did “not feel alone” despite the tribulations that a “wounded and sinful” Church was having to endure. The Pope, who turned 83 last Friday, has just returned from a two day trip to Malta during which he prayed with eight victims of the sexual abuse scandals, which have engulfed the Roman Catholic Church. He visits Portugal next month, and later this year will travel to Cyprus, Britain and Spain. Vatican sources said that the cardinals applauded the Pope at the lunch, in the Ducal Hall of the Apostolic Palace, where he was flanked by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, and Cardinal Bertone’s predecessor Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who is now Dean of the College of Cardinals. Both have been among the Pope’s most fervent defenders since the scandals broke a month ago, with the pontiff himself accused of having covered up paedophile priests both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, and later as head of doctrine at the Vatican. The Vatican denies this, saying that Benedict has done more than anyone to “clean up” the Church. Cardinal Sodano, who on Easter Sunday dismissed the allegations against the Pope as “idle chatter”, told him at the lunch that he was leading the Church “with great generosity” in the face of “the challenges that the modern world poses to each disciple of Christ”. The Italian Bishops’ Conference asked the faithful to pray for Benedict on his anniversary, and to include in their prayers both “the victims of sex abuse and those who have stained themselves with such heinous crimes.”
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