Pope criticises US bishops over handling of sex abuse crisis

Pope Benedict XVI told US bishops that the scourge of clergy sex abuse had sometimes been “very badly handled”.

Benedict’s comments yesterday, his 81st birthday, were his toughest criticism yet of the US church’s worst problem and marked the second day in a row that he addressed the abuse scandal.

They came as he addressed the nation’s bishops at Washington’s imposing Immaculate Conception shrine.

He also reminded the prelates that religion could not only be considered a “private matter” without any bearing on public behaviour.

The pontiff questioned how Catholics could ignore church teaching on sex, exploit or ignore the poor, or adopt positions contradicting “the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death”.

“Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted,” he said.

Benedict’s remarks came on a day when all of the five Catholic justices on the US Supreme Court approved the most widely-used method of lethal injection, and congressional representatives who support abortion rights said they planned to take Holy Communion at a papal Mass today.

Benedict returned to the clergy sex abuse scandal that has cost the American church more than £1 billion, most paid out to victims in the last six years, calling it a cause of “deep shame”.

He decried the “enormous pain” that communities have suffered from such “gravely immoral behaviour” by priests.

Benedict addressed clerical molesters in the wider context of secularism and the over-sexualisation of America. “What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?” he asked.

The Pope spoke after Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who is the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Cardinal George said the consequences of the clergy abuse scandal “and of its being sometimes very badly handled by bishops makes both the personal faith of some Catholics and the public life of the church herself more problematic”.

Benedict agreed.

“Responding to this situation has not been easy and, as the president of your Episcopal conference has indicated, it was sometimes very badly handled,” he said.

The German-born pope began his first full day in America with a visit to the White House, where a South Lawn crowd of more than 13,500 sang Happy Birthday and President George Bush said that the first papal White House visit in 29 years was a reminder for Americans to “distinguish between simple right and wrong”.

“We need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism and embrace a culture of justice and truth,” Mr Bush said. “In a world where some see freedom as simply the right to do as they wish, we need your message that true liberty requires us to live our freedom not just for ourselves, but in a spirit of mutual support.”

The pontiff said that he was visiting “as a friend, a preacher of the Gospel and one with great respect for this vast pluralistic society”.

His 90-minute visit to the White House – only the second by a pope – was accompanied by the kind of pomp and pageantry rarely seen even on grounds accustomed to welcoming royalty and the world’s most important leaders.

Bush and Benedict agreed that terrorism was an unacceptable weapon for any cause or religion. They also shared common ground in opposing terrorism, abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research.

But they disagree over the war in Iraq, the death penalty and the US trade embargo against Cuba. Benedict also speaks for environmental protection and social welfare in ways that run counter to Bush policies.

On Iraq, discussion steered away from the war itself to focus primarily on worries for the Christian minority in the Muslim-majority country, said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

“The two reaffirmed their total rejection of terrorism as well as the manipulation of religion to justify immoral and violent acts against innocents,” the statement said.

It also said the leaders “touched on the need to confront terrorism with appropriate means that respect the human person and his or her rights,” a reference Ms Perino could not explain.

Benedict has been critical of harsh interrogation methods, telling a meeting of the Vatican’s office for social justice last September that, while a country has an obligation to keep its citizens safe, prisoners must never be demeaned or tortured.