When Pope Benedict XVI announced the "Year of the Priest" that concluded Friday, he probably didn't have in mind the sort of year he got.
He acknowledged as much in a closing Mass, telling more than 10,000 assembled priests in St. Peter's Square that "in the very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light."Benedict had been widely expected to use the occasion to issue his most sweeping and detailed mea culpa to date for the clergy sexual abuse scandal, and perhaps to announce new measures to cope with it. The scandal has rocked the Roman Catholic Church in Europe this year, nearly a decade after it shook the American church to its roots.
But the pope did neither, blaming the problem on "the enemy," Satan, even as he begged forgiveness from God and from the victims of priest abuse, as he has several times recently. The latest comments failed to satisfy at least some in his audience, who called for greater accountability and more concrete measures to combat abuse.
Benedict celebrated the Mass in sweltering heat after presiding the night before over a vigil in which he strongly defended the church's requirement that priests take a vow of celibacy.
Although he has a reputation as an occasionally austere figure, the pope won praise from priests for speaking plainly and showing a keen understanding of their difficulties, as well as for inspiring them with reminders of the importance of their work and depth of their faith.
"It's a challenge being a priest today, no?" Andres Ulloa, 24, an Ecuadorean seminarian from Guayaquil, said after the Mass. "But he talked about the joys of being a priest.... He knows how to get to the center and the essence of problems."
At one point, sounding much like the academic he once was, Benedict spoke of the development of monotheism, and seemed to criticize non-Christian faiths as well as the Enlightenment, the historical movement that brought revolutionary developments in science and philosophy.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pope-forgiveness-20100612,0,940659.story
To see the complete text of the Pope's remarks, please click here
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