Word: popes
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...Good Friday 2005, as a dying Pope John Paul II watched via video hookup, worshippers outside the candlelit Way of the Cross ceremony in Rome's Colosseum recited meditations written by the man who would be his successor. Breaking with tradition, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's musings veered away from Christ's Passion and into the Catholic Church's current problems. "How much filth there is in the Church," he wrote, clearly referring to the charges of sex abuse by priests that had rocked the church in the U.S. "And even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely...
...Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, felt an unalloyed loathing for the abusers, his view on how they should be treated was more complicated. Some years before, as head of the Vatican body investigating abuse by priests, he argued that accused clergymen should not be handed over to secular authorities. Rather, he wrote confidentially to bishops around the world in 2001, they should first be investigated under utmost secrecy within the church - thereby avoiding public hysteria and second-guessing by the media. (See pictures of President Obama meeting Pope Benedict...
...Pope, all this has become deeply personal: many of the latest scandals are rooted in his native Germany, and they have dragged in his own brother, who headed a famous Bavarian choir at a school where young boys were allegedly abused. Benedict himself stands accused of poorly handling the case of a pedophile priest when he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising in the early 1980s. While there's virtually no chance of the Pope himself being brought down - the last time a Pontiff bowed out in disgrace was in 1046 (Gregory VI, for financial impropriety) - it is entirely possible...
...Pope's defenders say he has tried hard to force the church to confront its demons openly. "As Pope, he has been unusually and laudably aggressive in dealing with abusers," says David Gibson, author of a Benedict biography. Benedict has on several occasions called for "absolute transparency" on sexual abuse. During a visit to Washington, D.C., in 2008, he met in private with some victims of abuse by American priests. But he has been remarkably unforthcoming about the latest scandals. If the Pope does reveal his feelings about the current upheaval, it may be in writing: he said he would...
Still, the Pope is the Pope, a global leader with very few equals in terms of pomp, history and circumstance. His links, however indirect, to specific cases of sexual abuse will necessarily catch the attention of both Catholics and non-Catholics. Another priest acknowledged that Benedict being specifically named in the Milwaukee and German cases just makes the news all the more troubling. "It's so volatile right now," he says. "Many of the faithful who were losing confidence in their bishops, now, it's in the Church Universal. What you read in paper: it's a real crucifixion...