Expect Papal Meeting with UK Sexual Abuse Victims — Patten, Reuters, September 7, 2010

Expect Papal Meeting with UK Sexual Abuse Victims — Patten

Reuters
September 7, 2010

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/09/07/expect-papal-meeting-with-uk-sexual-abuse-victims-patten/

One regular but regularly unannounced feature of papal trips in recent years has been the private meeting with local Catholics who were sexually abused as youths by priests. Journalists only find out about them after they've taken place. Just such a meeting seems to be on the cards during Pope Benedict's visit to Britain next week, but of course it does not appear in his official schedule. Chris Patten, the prime minister's special representative for the papal visit, said as much on Monday in an interview with BBC television (quote at the end of the clip):

"On several previous visits, the pope has met victims of abuse. He has never said he was going to meet them before he did and his meetings have always, for very understandable reasons, been private. I would be surprised if in this visit or any future visit he behaved in any different way."

When our London correspondent Avril Ormsby asked about any possible meeting with victims in an interview with him last week, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said: "It will not be announced beforehand, and it will take place in private, if that is going to be the case. But precisely because of those rules, it is not clear."