Pope: Church Must Rebuild After Deep Wounds of Sex Abuse Scandal
Saturday, October 28, 2006

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday that the church must urgently rebuild confidence and trust damaged by clerical sex abuse scandals, which have created deep wounds.

The pope made the remarks to a group of visiting bishops from Ireland, an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation where the church has been damaged by sex abuse scandals over the past decade.

"In the exercise of your pastoral ministry, you have had to respond in recent years to many heart-rending cases of sexual abuse of minors," the pontiff told the bishops. "These are all the more tragic when the abuser is a cleric." the rest