Pope Addresses Sexual Abuse

Bianca Roseboro

Sunday, September 19, 2010

According to some followers of the Catholic faith, the Roman Catholic Church has not been very proactive in responding and correcting the sexual abuse of children by priests. While on a trip to Scotland on Thursday, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the criticism and stated,

These revelations were for me a shock and a great sadness. It is difficult to understand how this perversion of the priestly ministry was possible. How a man who has done this and said this can fall into this perversion is difficult to understand. It is also a great sadness that the authorities of the church were not sufficiently vigilant and insufficiently quick and decisive in taking the necessary measures.

In a poll conducted by ComRes for CNN, British people feel that the Pope has not done enough to punish these offenders. According to the poll, three out of four British people and two out of three Catholics feel as if he could do more with his power. Critics of these scandals maintain that although the Pope has not been vigilant in punishing the offending clergy, the church has been quick to keep the scandal concealed. A spokesperson for the group BishopAccountability, Terence McKiernan stated, “The pope affects the stance of a shocked bystander, when in fact he has been for decades the church's central handler of sex abuse cases.”

I believe that the scandal behind the Catholic Church has grown into a monster that they no longer can contain without the criticism of the world community. Such crimes against children should be handled promptly and with due diligence to show the victims that abuse supersedes the position of the priest. Pope Benedict XVI should show greater concern for the lives of these victims and severely punish the abusers in order to create a more positive view of the Catholic Church worldwide.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/16/uk.pope.visit/index.html