In an apparent reference to the sex abuse crisis, Pope Benedict said Thursday that it was time for the Catholic Church to do penance for its sins.<\/p>\n
While the Vatican has not released the pope\u2019s entire homily from a mass with the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, reported that Benedict said Christians have often avoided the word penance, since it seems too harsh.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, under the attacks of the world that speak to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace, and we see that it\u2019s necessary to do penance, to recognize what\u2019s wrong in our life,\u201d Benedict said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe suffering of penance, that is, of purification and transformation, that suffering is a grace, because it\u2019s renewal; it\u2019s the work of divine mercy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Pope Benedict has come under increasing pressure to speak out about the sex abuse crisis in the Church, and especially in his native Germany. His most extensive comments came last month in a letter to the Catholics of Ireland.<\/p>\n
Benedict marks five years as pope on April 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an apparent reference to the sex abuse crisis, Pope Benedict said Thursday that it was time for the Catholic Church to do penance for its sins. While the Vatican has not released the pope\u2019s entire homily from a mass with the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, reported that Benedict said […]<\/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-528495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528495","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=528495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}