Thursday, April 17, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI Apologizes to Sex Abuse Victims

I'm watching this on CNN, but it seems as if the Pope met with some sexual abuse victims of the Catholic Church. I'm not saying that this is going to change what happened overnight, but speaking up about the abuse, meeting the victims, has to be a positive step for the church.

1 comment:

Brian said...

Finally acknowledging the problem is definitely a good first step.

But they had plenty of opportunities before to deal with it. I wonder how hard the Pope lobbied on behalf of those victims when he was a Senior official at the Vatican and advisor to John Paul. My guess is... not much of an effort was made then.

It will be interesting to see if this gesture will be followed up with concrete action.

To this day they have criminals walking around still on their payroll. The government is reluctant (and has always been reluctant) to prosecute these guys for fear of offending the Catholic Church. Officials in some States, and certainly in the Federal government are afraid of losing Catholic voters... the feared backlash of any effort to arrest the child molesters and tackle the corruption. State and Federal governments are just as complicit in this madness. Their inaction sends the message to other child molesters within the Church to do the same...that there are no real consequences. It also sends the message to child molesters outside of the Catholic Church that the Church can offer good cover for their activities.