Word: pope
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...point in the next few decades. But once again, his blandishments were symbolic - he spoke a fair amount of Spanish - rather than polemical. And as the trip drew to a close and the excitement over his sex-scandal responses quieted, it became increasingly clear that although this supposedly "interim" Pope will never be, as Bono once called John Paul II, the rock-'n'-roll style "front man" for his church, he has grown fully into the public aspect of the role. At the North Tower footprint at Ground Zero on Sunday, he kneeled in silent prayer for a full...
...spiritual and mental health of the victims and the American church. Unquestionably, Cardinal O'Malley deserves some of the credit. He reportedly urged Benedict to include Boston, the sex-abuse Ground Zero on his itinerary, and when Benedict declined, refused to give up, bringing the victims to the Pope...
Papal visits are pastoral visits - that is, they are concerned with the encouraging and healing of a Pope's flock, not the formation of policy. And yet a pastoral statement as affecting as this one is something of a promissory note for subsequent action. At a TIME magazine luncheon for Cardinal William Levada, Benedict's successor as head of the Vatican doctrinal office (the one in charge of the most egregious sex abuse cases), we asked whether the Vatican intended to deal with the one part of the sex scandal that seems outstanding: beyond attending to victims and taking abusers...
...hinted to reporters that the Vatican was engaged in possible changes in church law that would enable it to deal with the scandal more nimbly. In fact, his response was not clear enough to project a significant policy initiative, and we'll have to wait and see if the Pope feels the need to fit new actions to brave words. Noted Janice McKay, a parishioner with a 21-year-old son, after Sunday morning Mass at St. Richard Catholic Church in Miami: "Yes, I think he's helped American Catholics feel a little better about the church because he made...
Other areas where the press's (if not the public's) appetite for policy outstripped the Pope's was a range of issues that he either soft-pedaled or failed to pronounce on at all this week. He did not address Iraq. He did not make any grand statements about conflict or dialogue with Islam, a dynamic that had dominated previous trips abroad. He did not address the question of denying communion to pro-choice politicians, although he did call their actions a "scandal." Nor did he deliver a major dressing-down of liberal Catholic educators that some had anticipated...