Monday, December 20, 2010

Pope Reflects on Child Abuse by Priests in 2010; Says Abuse of Children Is Now Common in Society

The Newsvine website reports that Pope Benedict XVI today (December 20, 2010) told Vatican officials that they must reflect on the church's culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common.

In his traditional end-of-the-year speech to Vatican cardinals and bishops, Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" that required the church to accept the "humiliation" as a call for renewal.

"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," the pope said.

Benedict also said, however, that the scandal must be seen in a broader social context, in which child pornography is considered normal by society and drug use and sexual tourism are on the rise.

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