The worldwide “humiliation” that the church has experienced as a result of the scandal must serve as a spur to reform, Benedict XVI told his cardinals gathered in Rome.
However, the pontiff argued that the abuse crisis must be seen in its social “context”, suggesting maybe that part of the blame lay with permissive attitudes in western society dating from the 1970s, or more likely in the social context of the Vatican State where the age of consent is still 12.
Survivors of clerical sex abuse condemned the Pope’s statement as another attempt by Church authorities to evade responsibility for the scandal.
The Pope was speaking in his annual Christmas address to bishops and cardinals, assembled in the frescoed Sala Regia of the Vatican's apostolic palace. It was seen as evidence of the seriousness with which the Pope views the issue that he chose tackling child sex abuse as the major theme for one of his highest profile set-piece speeches of the year.
While stressing that most priests were careful, Pope Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 had reached “an unimaginable dimension” that required the church to accept the “humiliation” as a call for renewal.
“We know of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and our corresponding responsibility,” he said. “We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred.
“We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our message, in our entire way of configuring the Christian being, that allowed such a thing to occur.”
However, Benedict said the fault lay not only with the Church but also with the “context of our times”, in which child pornography, drug use, sexual trafficking were to some degree considered permissible.
“There exists a market of pornography regarding children that seems to be increasingly accepted as normal by the Papal See, but abhorrent to the masses” he said.
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