Pope's Preacher Calls for Abuse Penance
The Associated Press
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
December 15, 2006

Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher asked the pontiff Friday to declare a day of fasting and penance to publicly declare repentance and express solidarity with the victims of clerical sex abuse.

In a strongly worded lecture, he denounced the 'abominations' committed inside the Roman Catholic Church 'by its own ministers and pastors' and declared that the church 'paid a high price for this.'

'The moment has come, after the emergency, to do the most important thing of all: to cry before God,' the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in the first of a series of pre-Christmas lectures in the presence of the pope in a Vatican chapel. the rest