VATICAN CITY
BBC News
By David Willey
BBC News, Rome
Popes tend to be prodigal with words. They make thousands of speeches and religious homilies every year. Nevertheless, papal pronouncements rarely hit the headlines.
But occasionally a single word or phrase shines out like a beacon that illuminates the arcane world of the Vatican.
One of these occasions was when at Easter 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, leading a Good Friday meditation at Rome’s Colosseum only days before the death of Pope John Paul II and his own election as Pope Benedict XVI, referred to the “filth” besmirching the Catholic Church.
We were at a loss to understand immediately to what he was referring.
As we now know, it was a reference to the clerical sexual abuse scandals which were damaging the credibility of the Catholic Church, not only in the United States, but also in many other countries.
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