Pope omits abuse scandals from Easter address

POPE BENEDICT XVI kept mum on paedophile priest scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church during his Easter Mass yesterday, as Christians across the world marked the resurrection of Christ.

While condemning persecution and lamenting the “suffering” of Christian minorities in Iraq and Pakistan, Benedict failed to mention any abuse by priests.

Rallying around the embattled head of the Roman Catholic Church in a rain-drenched St Peter’s Square, the dean of the College of Cardinals told the Pope in an unusual greeting: “The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the idle chatter of the moment.”

Cardinal Angelo Sodano was reprising the same phrase the Pope used a week ago when he urged Christians “not be intimidated by the idle chatter of prevailing opinions”.

In Paris, the archbishop of the city and head of the Catholic Church in France, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, said there was a “smear campaign aimed at the Pope” over the paedophile priest scandal. It was Benedict, then known as Cardinal Ratzinger, who “as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, encouraged bishops to take action against paedophilia by systematically informing Rome of such cases,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.

However, the top bishops in both Belgium and Germany issued forthright condemnations of the Church’s role in covering up for predator priests.

Belgium’s Andre Joseph Leonard, archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel, said in his Easter homily that the Church had mismanaged the crisis “with a guilty silence”.

Germany’s top archbishop, Robert Zollitsch, for his part, said: “Today particularly we must set out together and examine inconceivable events, awful crimes, the Church’s dark aspects as well as our shadowy sides.”

The scandals have cast a pall over Easter, the most joyous day in the Christian calendar, commemorating the day when Jesus Christ is believed to have been resurrected.

In his ‘Urbi et Orbi’ (to the city and the world) message the Pope said humankind needed “a spiritual and moral conversion . . . to emerge from a profound crisis, one which requires deep change, beginning with consciences.”

Benedict called for an end to conflicts in Africa, notably in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea and Nigeria, and condemned “a dangerous resurgence of crimes linked to drug trafficking” in Latin America and the Caribbean. He also offered solace to the people of Haiti and Chile following the massive earthquakes in their countries.