Pope meets abuse victims
PAPAL VISIT | 45,000 fill D.C. baseball stadium for mass
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Pope Benedict XVI met privately Thursday and prayed with several victims of clergy sex abuse.
It was the latest in a series of steps Benedict has taken during his first papal trip to the United States to deal with the scandal that has scarred the American church.
(AP)
PHOTO GALLERY
Locals attend mass
So what is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social networking service that allows readers like you to receive updates (or "tweets") from Joe all day long via our Web site. Check back all-day long as Joe updates you on the latest Sox news -- from the game and practice to on the road and from the locker room. You can also get updates sent right to your phone or IM whenever Joe has news to share -- for free.
"They prayed together," Lombardi said. "Also, each of them had their own individual time with the Holy Father. Some were in tears."
Lombardi said he believed this was the first such session between a pope and abuse victims.
Benedict also dealt with the sexual abuse crisis during a mass at sun-soaked Nationals Park before more than 45,000 people who traveled from all over the country and the world.
"No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse," Benedict said. "It is important that those who have suffered be given loving, pastoral attention. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the church."
The pope had been expected to address the issue just once during his six-day U.S. trip, at a mass Saturday in New York. But he has tackled it again and again, saying the crisis caused "deep shame" and acknowledging "gravely immoral behavior" by priests.
And, as he has so many times, the pontiff also carried a message of hope that seemed to resonate Thursday with the throng, which responded with cheering, chants, applause and reverent silence.
"Americans have always been a people of hope," Benedict said. "Your ancestors came to this country with the expectation of finding new freedom and opportunity, while the vastness of the unexplored wilderness inspired in them the hope of being able to start completely anew, building a new nation on new foundations."
But that promise, the pope said, hasn't always applied equally to everyone.
"One thinks of the injustices endured by the native American peoples," he said, "and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves."
Still, he said hope "is very much a part of the American character. And the Christian virtue of hope -- the hope poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the hope which supernaturally purifies and corrects our aspirations by focusing them on the Lord and his saving plan -- that hope has also marked, and continues to mark, the life of the Catholic community in this country."
Toward the end of the mass, which the pope led from an altar in centerfield, opera star Placido Domingo gave an emotional performance of Cesar Franck's communion meditation "Panis Angelicus."
The faithful filled the new baseball stadium. Though the pope's words were muddled at times by his thick accent and insufficient amplification, they listened intently. And, beneath cloudless blue skies, with the Capitol dome visible in the distance, they prayed and sang and bowed their heads for a blessing.
"I just feel the unity of all of us being here," said Betty Kabance, 75, who came with her son Jon, 32, from Chicago. "That, to me, is so important."
Mother and son carried prayer requests from friends, though in entirely different formats that evidenced their generational gap. Betty Kabance had a large, yellow envelope stuffed with all shapes and sizes of paper petitions. Her son's were stored as e-mails on his BlackBerry.
A handful of Chicagoans were among those tapped to concelebrate the mass and to help with the large-scale distribution of communion. Tom Dwyer, 50, there with his wife Anita, 53, was among them. Dwyer, a banker, has been a deacon at St. Edmund Parish in Oak Park since last spring. He described his presence at the papal mass as the "chance of a lifetime."
He wasn't put off by the surroundings, which included hot dog stands, which opened after mass.
"I'm a little more traditional," Dwyer said. "But it'll do."
"This is an amazing moment," said the Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, president of DePaul University. "Because most people are attached to their parishes. That's the Catholic Church they know, they love, they go to every week. But then there's these certain moments that suddenly push you into remembering you're part of something that's worldwide."
Contributing: AP
