Pope Benedict XVI : UN’s new champion for human rights?
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI was Friday to defend human rights at a landmark speech to the UN General Assembly as part of his ground-breaking and emotional trip to the United States.
The pontiff, whose Alitalia jet arrived at JFK International, flew by helicopter to the UN headquarters where he was met by UN chief Ban Ki-Moon before his scheduled speech.
The UN address was to be one of the highlights of Benedict’s first papal visit to the United States during which he has taken unprecedented steps to atone for decades of sexual abuse of young people by US Catholic priests.
After celebrating Mass with some 48,000 people in Washington Thursday, Benedict met privately with five abuse victims to offer them solace as he acknowledged the pain and damage caused by the scandal.
The group prayed together and the pontiff then listened to the stories of the victims, and “offered them words of encouragement and hope,” the Vatican said in a statement.
“His Holiness assured them of his prayers for their intentions, for their families and for all victims of sexual abuse,” the statement added.
Benedict also scheduled a historic papal visit to a New York synagogue later Friday, just hours before Passover, in a sign of his commitment to maintaining dialog with Jewish leaders.
Benedict had met privately with Jewish leaders in Washington Thursday and urged Jews and Roman Catholics to forge “new attitudes” to foster world peace.
“I wish … to reiterate the Church’s commitment to the dialog that in the past 40 years has fundamentally changed our relationship for the better,” the pope said in a message to Jewish leaders.
“I ask the Jewish community to accept my Passover greeting in a spirit of openness to the real possibilities of cooperation,” the pope said.
Some of the abuse victims told CNN that Benedict had given them hope that the Catholic Church would change.
“I said to him, Holy Father, you have a cancer growing in your flock and you need to do something about that, and I hope you understand me and hear me,” said Bernie McDaid, who was abused at the age of 12.
“And I touched his heart, and he nodded again. He looked down at the floor and looked back up, and nodded,” he said.
Said another victim, Olan Horne: “When you meet somebody and you know that you don’t have to convince them that there’s a problem, and they intrinsically understand their role in it, you know it.
“And we could see that. We could see it in the eyes, we could see it in the sincerity and there’s a phenomenal hope that I came out of that meeting with.”
The pope has already apologized several times since the start of his six-day trip on Tuesday saying he was “deeply ashamed” of the scandal.
A US group for victims of clerical sexual abuse said the meeting was positive but the pope, the leader of more than a billion Catholics, needed to do much more to reform the Church and prevent further abuse.
“This is a small, long overdue step forward on a very long road,” the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement.
The US clergy sex scandal mushroomed into a nationwide embarrassment for the Church after the then archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, resigned in 2002 amid intense pressure due to his handling of abusive priests.
Last year, the US Church paid out 615 million dollars (400 million euros) to settle sex abuse cases, according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” Benedict said as he celebrated Mass Thursday in the new Washington Nationals ballpark.
Benedict Wednesday met President George W. Bush in the first papal visit to the White House in three decades and urged the US leader to prioritize diplomacy over war as a way of resolving conflicts.
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