The head of the German bishops apologized to victims of sexual abuse on Friday after meeting with Pope Benedict. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said the Pope was deeply disturbed by the latest reports of abuse in schools and other church institutions in his home country.<\/p>\n
Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference, said while the statistics show that pedophilia is not just a problem in the Catholic Church, it is particularly reprehensible when carried out by people with moral authority, such as priests.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are ready to face our responsibility and we don\u2019t want to make excuses for anything that happened,\u201d Zollitsch said at a Rome news conference, but added that there are numerous reports of sex abuse now coming to light in Germany, and they goes far beyond the Church.<\/p>\n
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi and other Vatican officials have echoed the same theme, saying it doesn\u2019t diminish the responsibility of churchmen, but helps put the problem into context.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a growing awareness we\u2019re dealing with a human problem \u2013 which you also find in the Church,\u201d one Vatican official told Foxnews.com.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Church is an easy target but the fact is the problem hasn\u2019t been faced,\u201d the official said. \u201cThe real problem is in the homes, and that\u2019s the big elephant in the room that no one wants to touch.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 170 students from Catholic schools in Germany have recently come forth with stories of sexual and physical abuse. It is just the latest in a series of scandals to rock the church in Europe.<\/p>\n
The problem has been particularly serious in Ireland, and Benedict scheduled to write a letter to Irish faithful on the subject before Easter.<\/p>\n
Shortly before the death of Pope John Paul II, the future pope, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, referred to what he called \u201cfilth\u201d in the Catholic Church during a Good Friday meditation.<\/p>\n
As pope, he met with victims of clerical sex abuse during his 2008 visit to the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The head of the German bishops apologized to victims of sexual abuse on Friday after meeting with Pope Benedict. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said the Pope was deeply disturbed by the latest reports of abuse in schools and other church institutions in his home country. Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference, said while the statistics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4491,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}