Pope Begins U.S. Visit; Says He Is Ashamed of Sex Scandal

Ashley Flaherty/April 25,2008 10:02am/Religious conflict

Pope Benedict XVI landed in the United States on Tuesday beginning a six day visit. On his flight he told reporters how upset he is about the Roman Catholic Church's child sexual abuse scandal in the United States. He began his visit discussing an issue that has wounded the Catholic church in the United States, stating that the child sexual abuse scandal has caused great suffering for the church and him personally. The scandal has produced thousands of sexually abused children and about 5,000 priests have been accused. This has cost the church two billion dollars in settlement fees. The pope stated that " As I read the histories of those victims, it is difficult for me to understand how it is possible that priests betrayed in this way. Their mission was to give healing, to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future." He drew a distinction between priests with homosexual tendencies and those inclined to molest children, saying that he would not speak about homosexuality but pedophilia. He wants to absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry. The pope said that church officials were going through the seminaries that train would be priests to make sure that those candidates have no such tendencies. Aides said that he was deeply distressed reading the accounts of victims whose trust in the church was betrayed by the priests who violated them. Benedict has done or said or done little publicly about the abuse issue until now. Advocates for victims have criticized the church for failing to call to account bishops who allowed abusive priests to remain in the ministry. They are looking for the pope to change canon law to enable diocess worldwide to remove abusive priests from the ministry and eventually priesthood, a change that was granted to the church when the scandals broke out in 2002.
I think that it is a disgrace that it took the pope five years to finally address this problem publicly . It should have been done years ago and I think that the pope no addressing this issue has made the catholic church look even worse. If they would do something about it and have punishment for these priests in the church then maybe they could get a handle on this occurring issue.