VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI’s personal preacher asked the pontiff on Friday to declare a day of fasting and penance to publicly declare repentance and to express solidarity with the victims of clerical sex abuse.

In a strongly worded lecture, he denounced the “abominations” committed inside the church “by its own ministers and pastors” and declared that the Roman Catholic Church had “paid a high price for this.”

“The moment has come, after the emergency, to do the most important thing of all: to cry before God,” the priest, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, said in the first of a series of pre-Christmas lectures in the presence of the pope in a Vatican chapel.

The Vatican said it had no immediate comment on the speech, which Cantalamessa sent to some Vatican reporters.

Cantalamessa suggested that the church “indicate a day of fasting and penance, at local and national level, where the problem was particularly strong, to publicly express repentance before God and solidarity with the victims.”

Victims advocates call for more
A U.S. advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse by clergy criticized the call as inadequate.

“Decisive action protects kids, not nice gestures,” Barbara Blaine, national president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement.

“We’d much rather the pope discipline complicit bishops instead, because that’s what is just, appropriate and effective,” she said, contending that hundreds of bishops had covered up thousands of sex crimes.

Although the pope’s reaction was not immediately known, Benedict has recently said that the church must urgently rebuild confidence and trust damaged by clerical sex abuse, telling Irish bishops in October that “the wounds caused by such acts run deep.”

The pope’s comments to bishops from Ireland — which, along with the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, was hard hit by the scandal — were his first explicit remarks on the subject since he became pope.

In March 2005, Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, denounced what he called “filth” in the church “even among those ... in the priesthood.” Those words were seen by many as a possible denunciation of the abuse scandals.

Cantalamessa cited the pope’s words to the Irish bishops, but he also took a swipe at clergy who he said were “seeking to profit from the sensation, even profiting from their own sins, releasing interviews, writing memoirs in an attempt to throw the blame on their superiors and the religious community.”

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I'm glad to see the higher ups are finally admitting their guilt in their 'child sex rings'. I doubt that'll help the thousands of victims they help set up very much and protecting those sickos from the law.

The Pope should be punished himself for setting up the cloak and dagger ideal to the sexual abuse so it went on and on and on taking in even more victims of horrible abuse.

Not to myopic and selfish. The children raped by clerics that were supported in their deviance as pedophiles, are those that paid a high price for this! The church is paying now in court ordered damages, priests finally entering prison where they belong, to find out what rape is like. And the church is paying finally, after all these many centuries of enabling child sex abuse, being exposed for harboring and covering up the innumerable cases of child rape that has been perpetrated by clergy! The penance they need suffer is imprisonment! All those that committed acts right down to those that covered it up, moved offender pedophiles to other parishes that were unaware of the new deviant wolf in sheep's clothing that has arrived in their midst to continue the sin of child rape and victimization.

If the church wants to bow and weep for this horrific history of transgression and for betraying the trust of countless children, to the hands of deviant evil , they should surrender every priest guilty of the abomination, to authorities. Instead of continuing to cover up, transfer and even hide the whereabouts of those alleged fleeing pervert felons that cross the border so as to escape mortal justice. If these pedophiles do believe in a god, they may run now but their faith tells them when they die they'll not escape justice after life. Or, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they can be forgiven in the confessional or during last rites, and wash clean their eternal soul. Leaving behind as their shameful legacy a history of assaulted children that will never feel clean again.


Penance!? Hell, in a perfect world that would be served with a quickness. Tie them down and slice off the offending weapon! After all, that's down right biblical. If they eye offendeth the, pluck it out! Well, if thy phallus offendeth innocence whack it off! And then shove it in the mouth of that penitent praying deviant. So they have some idea how that felt in the mouth of a baby. Death cures pedophiles.

I don't know if its the "most important thing" in fact I disagree but it is good to see that something is being done about the abuse.

If there were a god, I would imagine it weeps for those children that were raped by it's clergy. While the offense was covered up, so that the evil would continue to flourish for centuries. Perpetrated by those in service to and within the protection of, that religious Roman institution in service to god.

How can I tell there is not a god!? Because the prayers for salvation from raped children continue to go unanswered. And the only relief they enjoy, is when they dare to speak out and save themselves.