c. 2008 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday (April 17) urged his American flock to console victims of clergy sexual abuse, and then personally reached out to a small group of survivors with a closed-door meeting at the Vatican embassy.

The pope’s repeated attention on abuse, which has emerged as an unexpected theme of his first U.S. visit, came on a busy day in which he celebrated Mass for 46,000 faithful, met with Catholic educators and asked for solidarity with interfaith leaders.

Benedict met with a small number of victims alongside Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who called the half-hour session “a very moving experience, very prayerful.”

It was a level of personal involvement not seen in Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, who presided during the scandal but never visited the U.S. church after it first erupted in 2002.

During the sun-dappled morning Mass at the new Nationals Park baseball stadium, Benedict signaled that the highest levels of the church still feel the sting of a scandal that has claimed some 14,000 victims and cost the U.S. church more than $2 billion.

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” he said at the stadium Mass. He also urged the U.S. church to care for its clergy, whose ranks have been demoralized by the scandal.

“I ask you to love your priests, and to affirm them in the excellent work they do,” the pope said.

Victims advocates called the papal audience a “small, long overdue step” but remained angry that bishops who allowed the abuse to fester have not faced formal discipline.

“We cannot confuse words _ even sincere, eloquent ones _ with deeds,” said Joelle Casteix, a California leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which was not a part of the meeting with the pope.

Rank-and-file Catholics, meanwhile, welcomed the pope’s focus on the scandal. “It was good to acknowledge it and not just sweep it under the rug,” said Matt King, 36, a computer consultant from Chesapeake Beach, Md., at the stadium Mass.

Just one day earlier, Benedict told the nation’s bishops that the scandal had “sometimes been badly handled” and said they had a divine mandate to “bind up the wounds … with loving concern to those so seriously wronged.”

The high-level and repeated attention to the abuse scandal overshadowed much of the pope’s other activities, including a meeting with more than 200 Catholic educators. He told them Catholic schools must be shaped by the gospel and church teachings both inside and outside the classroom.

“Divergence from this vision weakens Catholic identity,” the pope said in a speech at Catholic University, “and, far from advancing freedom, inevitably leads to confusion, whether moral, intellectual or spiritual.”

The pope’s remarks to educators come as many campuses find themselves at the center of sometimes contentious debates over academic freedom and fidelity to church teachings. At the same time, an estimated 13,000 Catholic elementary and high schools have closed their doors since 1990 as costs outpace tuition, effectively displacing about 300,000 students.

“Catholic identity is not dependent on statistics,” the pope said. “Neither can it be equated simply with orthodoxy of course content.”

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Yet far from the harsh rebuke some Catholics were expecting, and others were hoping for, Benedict addressed the educators as a kindly, aged teacher.

While he affirmed the “great value” of academic freedom, the pope also said using that freedom to contradict the church would “obstruct or even betray” a Catholic school’s identity and mission.

And as in other speeches during his inaugural U.S. trip as pontiff, the pope urged the faithful to search out objective truth, guided by faith and reason, and placed special emphasis on reaching the young.

“We all know, and observe with concern, the difficulty or reluctance many people have today entrusting themselves to God. It is a complex phenomenon and one which I ponder continually,” he said.

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Benedict was warmly greeted at a brief interfaith ceremony at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, where he was presented with a silver menorah, an edition of the Quran, a bronze Buddhist bell and other symbolic gifts.

The meeting did not feature the high-octane tension that has characterized Benedict’s relations with Islam, ever since he seemed to link the spread of Islam with violence during a 2006 speech in Germany. Yet in his appeal for interfaith cooperation, Benedict said dialogue is not a goal for its own sake.

“The broader purpose of dialogue is to discover the truth,” he said. “What is the origin and destiny of mankind? What are good and evil? What awaits us at the end of our earthly existence? Only by addressing these deeper questions can we build a solid basis for the peace and security of the human family.”

Sayyid Syeed, the secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America and a veteran of Catholic-Muslim dialogue, noted past “mistakes” in interfaith relations, but said the meeting with the pope would move things along.

“This is more symbolic,” he said after the meeting. “We don’t have to settle things here. This gives a push forward.”

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Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, noted Jewish discomfort with a Good Friday prayer that calls for the conversion of Jews in the old Latin Mass that Benedict revived last summer.

“We have to learn that … a friend is a friend and a disagreement is a disagreement,” he said, “and we should not allow disagreements to destroy relationships.”

KRE/PH END BURKEEds: Ledes with new content from pope’s interfaith event; confirms meeting with abuse victims.

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