Pope Benedict XVI steered clear on Sunday of the pedophile priest scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church in his high-profile Easter speech as top prelates closed ranks around him.
“The people of God are with you and do not allow themselves to be impressed by the idle chatter of the moment,” Dean of the Vatican’s College of Cardinals Angelo Sodano said.
The unusual gesture just before Benedict began celebrating Easter mass in St Peter’s Square echoed the embattled pope’s own remarks a week ago when he urged Christians “not be intimidated by the idle chatter of prevailing opinions.”
The pope, in his much-awaited Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) message on Sunday, made no mention of the scandals, although he made a broad call for a “spiritual and moral conversion” and said humankind was in a “profound crisis, one which requires deep change, beginning with consciences.”
In contrast, leading bishops in Belgium and Germany issued forthright condemnations of the Church’s role in covering up for predator priests.
Belgium’s Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel Andre Joseph Leonard said in his Easter homily that the Church had mismanaged the crisis “with a guilty silence.”
Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch 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.”
Vatican expert Bruno Bartoloni said the Church was going through its “hardest period since the publication [in 1968] of the Humanae Vitae [Of Human Life]” — a papal encyclical by pope Paul VI that attacked use of the birth control pill as a mortal sin.
“At that time the crisis was as deep, with personal attacks against the pope and the Church in general,” Bartoloni said.
Many of the pilgrims among the tens of thousands huddled under umbrellas for the rain-drenched Easter mass here defended the pope.
Edgar Meier of Germany accused the media of blowing up the affair, saying: “It’s not a typical thing of the Church. Journalists are making it something bigger than it really is.”
However, another German in the crowd, Claudia Binion, said the pope “should resign because he is too implicated” in the crisis, which she called a “huge problem.”
“For those who have these tendencies, the Church is the best place to go because they are with children and are hidden and protected,” she said.
The US group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said the victims still seek concrete action from the pope.
“When we speak up and tell how our childhood innocence was shattered by sexual assaults by priests it is not ‘petty gossip,’” SNAP president Barbara Blaine said. “Lofty statements from Vatican officials do not change the facts.”
Easter mass at Dublin’s Pro Cathedral did not go as smoothly as protesters hung pairs of children’s shoes on the railings to represent the victims of predator priests.
Abuse survivors heckled Archbishop Diarmuid Martin as he went inside, and protesters held placards reading: “Hypocrites for Jesus. Catholic Church rapes, abuses, destroys children and covers it up, covers it up, covers it up.”
In his homily, Martin said: “The spotlight of media and public opinion is focused on the failures and the betrayals of Church leaders and a damaging culture which has grown up in the Church. The truth will set the Church free, even if the truth is hard to digest.”
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