Pope Benedict: Unsparing in Analysis of Sex Abuse Scandal

Let us continue to pray for the healing of all the innocent children who were abused by priests. 

From CatholicCulture.org:

Pope Benedict in his address stated:
"We must accept this humiliation as an exhortation to truth and a call to renewal. Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen. We must discover a new resoluteness in faith and in doing good. We must be capable of doing penance. We must be determined to make every possible effort in priestly formation to prevent anything of the kind from happening again." 


He said that the prevailing attitudes of the 1960s and 1970s broke down the moral consensus against sexual exploitation.


Pope Benedict recalled that “to a degree we could not have imagined, we came to know of abuse of minors committed by priests who twist the sacrament into its antithesis, and under the mantle of the sacred profoundly wound human persons in their childhood, damaging them for a whole lifetime.”

He quoted from a mystical vision of St. Hildegard of Bingen, who said:

For my Bridegroom’s wounds remain fresh and open as long as the wounds of men’s sins continue to gape. And Christ’s wounds remain open because of the sins of priests.