VATICAN CITY
Irish Times
Paddy Agnew
Wed, Sep 25, 2013
In a surprise statement, pope emeritus Benedict XVI yesterday claimed that in his time as pontiff he had never tried to hide clerical sex abuse crimes.
Benedict (86), who resigned as pope in February and was replaced by Pope Francis, made his remarks in the context of an open letter in yesterday’s Rome daily, La Repubblica, to mathematician, writer and atheist, Piergiorgio Odifreddi.
Replying to criticism regarding clerical child sex abuse, Pope Benedict writes: “With regard to what you write about the abuse of young people by priests, I can only, as you know well, express my profound consternation. I have never tried to hide these things. It is a matter of great suffering for us that the power of evil can penetrate right into the inner world of the faith. On the one hand, we have to carry this burden and, on the other, we have to do everything possible to guarantee that similar cases do not happen again.”
‘Filth’
Benedict goes on to reject the idea that this “filth” is in any way “peculiar to Catholicism” adding that, “according to sociological research”, the percentage of priests who are paedophiles is similar to the percentage of paedophiles in other professions. His words cut little ice with victims’ lobbies such as the US group, Snap, which commented yesterday:
“Over a clerical career that lasted more than six decades, we can’t think of a single child-molesting bishop, priest, nun, brother or seminarian that Benedict ever exposed . . .
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