Pope Benedict told pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday that the Catholic Church in Ireland has been “severely shaken” by the sex abuse crisis there.
He said he’ll sign his letter to the Irish faithful on the subject on Friday, the feast of St. Joseph, and the guardian of the Holy Family. “My hope is that it will help in the process of repentance, healing and renewal,” he said.
But it won’t just be the Irish reading the letter closely. As the scandal has grown across Europe, and particularly in the pontiff’s native Germany, Catholics have been waiting for Benedict to speak out.
Earlier this year, he met in Rome with the Irish bishops, calling sex abuse a “heinous crime” and a “grave sin.”
Benedict told Irish Catholics he felt betrayal and shame about the Irish situation, and more of that kind of language is likely to be seen in his letter.
When the abuse scandal first broke in the United States, Vatican officials were largely defensive, seeing it as an attack on the Catholic Church.
But the future pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seems to have been deeply shaken by the number and severity of the cases in the U.S., and he has met with victims in both Australia and the United States.
As Pope, he also asked one elderly but high-profile suspect, Padre Marcial Maciel, to retire to a life of prayer and penance. Maciel, who died in 2008, was the Mexican founder of the Legion of Christ, a group favored by Pope John Paul II and other top Vatican officials.
Maciel has been accused of abuse by several former seminarians in the Legion, and is known to have fathered at least one child, although critics claim the real number is closer to six.
Pope Benedict ordered an investigation into the Legion of Christ after the revelations of Maciel’s behavior became public, and were finally acknowledged by the Legion itself.