Pope Benedict Meets with Abuse Victims

In the two days since Pope Benedict arrived in the United States, he has repeatedly addressed the clergy sexual abuse scandal.

Before he made his first comments about the scandal, the media kept talking about "the cloud" hanging over the Pope's visit. There was speculation that he might mention the scandal in passing and maybe not at all.

Protesters were ready to slam the Pope for shunning the victims. The media were poised to do the same.

Pope Benedict's words and actions should cause the protesters and the media to revise their plans a bit.

WASHINGTON -- Pope Benedict XVI prayed with tearful victims of clergy sex abuse in a chapel Thursday, an extraordinary gesture from a pontiff who has made atoning for the great shame of the U.S. church the cornerstone of his first papal trip to America.

Benedict's third day in the U.S. began with a packed open-air Mass celebrated in 10 languages at a baseball stadium, and it included a speech to Roman Catholic college and university presidents.

But the real drama happened privately, in the chapel of the papal embassy between events.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman, said that Benedict and Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley met with a group of five or six abuse victims for about 25 minutes, offering them encouragement and hope. The group from O'Malley's archdiocese were all adults, men and women, who had been molested when they were minors. Each spoke privately with the pope and the whole group prayed together.

...[O'Malley] called the meeting "a very moving experience for all who participated."

"The Holy Father shared that he has come to the United States with great sorrow in his heart over this crisis and has been continuously praying for all who were affected," the cardinal said in a statement Thursday night.

O'Malley had invited Benedict to Boston as part of his U.S. journey, and when that didn't work out, the cardinal kept in touch with the papal nuncio, Benedict's representative in the U.S., to see if it was possible to put him in touch with victims during the visit, said the Rev. John Connolly, a special assistant to O'Malley.

"The desire to do this was definitely from the Holy Father," Connolly said.

The pope ultimately asked O'Malley to invite a small group of victims who were "both open to meeting him and would derive a spiritual benefit," Connolly said.

...Expected to address the problem only once during his six-day trip — at a Mass with priests in New York City on Saturday — Benedict has instead returned to the issue repeatedly, beginning in a news conference on the flight from Rome to the U.S.

He has called the crisis a cause of "deep shame," pledged to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood and decried the "enormous pain" that communities have suffered from such "gravely immoral behavior" by priests.

On Wednesday, he told bishops the problem has sometimes been very "badly handled" and said it was their God-given duty to heal the wounds caused by abuse. He asked each parishioner at Mass on Thursday "to do what you can to foster healing and reconciliation, and to assist those who have been hurt."

But Thursday afternoon's session went a step further. Lombardi said it was believed to be the first-ever such session between a pope and abuse victims.

No one can say that the Pope has minimized the suffering of the victims.

He has personally taken on the shame of the immoral behavior of priests.

Pope Benedict is treating the victims with compassion and love. He hopes to bring healing.

I hope the concern and the promises of the Holy Father help to ease the pain of the victims.