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April 17, 2008

Pope visit: Victims' meeting 'an extraordinary gesture'

A Diocese of Providence official who has handled the sex-abuse scandal for the diocese and who has experience in dealing with the Vatican reacted to Pope Benedict XVI's meeting in Washington today with several victims of a problem that has affected dioceses around the country.

"This was an extraordinary gesture, a tremendous gesture" that breaks with a long-standing tradition of papal distance from the pastoral concerns of individual Catholics, said Msgr. Paul Theroux, the vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Providence.

"This is the head of the universal church, the vicar of Christ on earth. The Holy Father on a day to day basis deals with heads of state," Theroux said, explaining that a pope almost always handles pastoral concerns through the church hierarchy. Therefore, Theroux said, the pope's meeting with the abuse victims today is strikingly dramatic to any students of papal history.

Coming after three successive days in which Benedict discussed the shame of the sex abuse scandal in terms unprecedented for a pope, Theroux said that Benedict's meeting with the sex-abuse victims will carry a powerful symbolic message throughout the church.

"Even though this is only a small, representative group" of the many Catholics harmed by abusive priests, Theroux said today's meeting "speaks of how significant this issue is to the Holy Father."

However, Theroux said he thinks it unlikely that many individual victims of the sex abuse or the organized groups that represent them "will suddenly say tomorrow, `Well, now we've turned the corner.' "

Theroux said he also fears that because the pope has met with so few victims today, some critics will view the gesture as insufficient.

-- John E. Mulligan of the Journal Washington Bureau, with projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 6:16 PM | Permalink

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