Vatican Outlines Path to Restoring Faith in Church

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

ROME — After a week of angry counterattacks by the Catholic Church against its critics over clerical sex abuse, the Vatican struck a more conciliatory tone on Friday with a statement from its spokesman that raised the possibility that Pope Benedict XVI would again meet with victims.

Within hours, however, another apparent case of leniency toward a pedophile priest emerged. News broke of a 1985 letter signed by the future pope, then the Vatican’s top doctrinal official, resisting efforts to defrock a priest convicted of molesting children, citing the good of the church and the priest’s “young age.”

The Vatican had tried to highlight a softer new focus in the Friday statement, which was read on Vatican Radio by its director, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, who is the Vatican spokesman. He spoke of “reconstituting a climate of justice and full faith in the institution of the church,” by ensuring that the church cooperated with civil justice systems as well as following canon law in dealing with abusive priests.

But the latest report demonstrated just how difficult it has become for the Vatican to deal with the matter in the fast-moving news cycle.

Supporters of the pope, Father Lombardi said, will continue “responding with patience to the drip-drip of partial or presumptive ‘revelations’ that seek to wear down his credibility or that of other institutions and persons of the church.”

The church is confronting a surge of reports of past sexual abuse by priests across Europe and contentions that the hierarchy failed to act properly against abusers. Several cases dealt with by subordinates of Benedict while he was a cardinal in Rome, and later while pope, have come under scrutiny.

Vatican experts suggested Benedict may have realized it was time to change the timbre of the Vatican’s public statements.

“In the last week, one had the feeling it was defending itself, of being on the defensive,” said Antonio Socci, who writes on Vatican affairs.

“The pope doesn’t want to be on the defensive,” he said. “He truly wants to uproot these elements, and wanted to pass on to the offensive.”

Many cardinals and other churchmen in recent days have let loose with almost daily attacks in speeches and interviews on what they consider to be a willful campaign to undermine the church and the pope. They have referred to what they claim to be distorted and unfair media reports.

The pope’s official preacher compared criticism of the church to anti-Semitism, although he later apologized, and the dean of the college of cardinals called it “petty gossip.”

Father Lombardi’s address was titled, “After Holy Week, Holding the Course,” and did not depart in substance from the Vatican’s positions.

He said the church should continue “to search for the truth and peace for the offended.”

“One of the things which is most striking is that so many interior wounds are coming to light today which arise from many years ago,” he continued. “We probably must create a deeper experience of events that have so negatively marked the lives of people,” he said.

He suggested a way to accomplish that: “In the context of attending to the victims, the pope has written that he is ready for new meetings with them.” He did not release any details.

Benedict has met with victims of physical and sexual clerical abuse on at least three occasions: in Washington in April 2008; in July of that year in Sydney, Australia; and in Rome a year ago.

One victims’ advocacy group, the United States-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, dismissed the idea of another encounter.

“Any meeting the pope may have with victims helps him look good while doing nothing noteworthy,” Barbara Dorris, the group’s outreach director, said in a statement. “Kids need and deserve immediate protection and dramatic reform, not public relations ploys and photo ops”

Bernie McDaid, 54, of Peabody, Ma., who said he was abused as a 12-year-old altar boy, met with Benedict in Washington. He said Benedict offered a "hollow apology" and little more.

“I went for dialogue and I didn’t get it,” he said. “I pushed him to talk and he wouldn’t talk to me.”

While the tones were measured, Father Lombardi repeated the church’s analysis of what caused a profusion of abuse cases of past decades: the “sexual revolution” and a general secularization of society, and said pedophilia in the church should be seen in the context of a broader problem in society.

As for media coverage, he said journalists have been softer on the subject in countries where the church is stronger. At the same time, more attention should be paid to the question of child abuse in the United States, where, he said, “in only 2008,” 62,000 such cases have been reported, “while the group of Catholic priests is so small as not to be even taken into consideration as such.”

Despite the overall softer tone, he also did not shy away from confronting the church’s critics, saying at the end of his comment that “unfounded insinuations and criticisms are not lacking.”

Katie Zezima contributed reporting from Boston.

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