Pope feels 'sadness and shame'

Pontiff tells 800,000 to keep the faith despite 'the harm done by some priests and religious to the young and vulnerable'

By MICHAEL VALPY, RELIGION AND ETHICS REPORTER, The Globe and Mail
Monday, July 29, 2002

Despite the pontiff's public airing of the issue that has become an open sore in the Roman Catholic Church, his failure to apologize to the victims of assaults angered victims' groups in the United States, where the church has been rocked by the scandal since the start of the year.

Instead, the Pope talked about "the vast majority of dedicated and generous priests . . . whose only wish is to serve and do good."

And referring to the hundreds of priests and seminarians who took part in the church's World Youth Day held throughout last week in Toronto, he told young people listening to him: "Be close to them and support them."

The Pope's comments were applauded. They were included in the homily he delivered at the final World Youth Day mass held at Downsview Park, a former air-force base in the city's northwest corner. The mass, which was open to the public, was attended by up to 800,000 people, including about 50,000 young Americans.

In May, John Paul told a private Vatican meeting of U.S. cardinals called to deal with the sex-abuse issue that there was no place in the priesthood for those who harm the young, and that society rightly considers sexual abuse a crime.

His comments were interpreted as a signal the Vatican would no longer view sex abuse by the clergy as a "spiritual problem" to be handled within the church. Until yesterday, however, he had not spoken about it publicly.

The Pope arrived by helicopter at Downsview in a lashing rain storm while a 500-member choir sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah -- 18th-century music more closely associated with a British king than a pontiff. It resplendently filled the air as his aircraft circled slowly above the vast crowd before descending.

More than 200,000 World Youth Day delegates had waited overnight for John Paul in a vigil, a traditional ritual of spiritual preparation for a religious festival. The Pope had joined them for 2½ hours early Saturday evening, warning them against a technological world that prized efficiency and productivity but had no room for the spiritual side of humankind.

After he left, youthful high spirits and the rain that began shortly after midnight appeared largely to outweigh pious devotions. As water penetrated makeshift shelters and soaked sleeping bags, the young people danced through the night to the beat of bongo drums, sang hymns, talked, walked and looked for food.

Many of the walking paths through the crowd became mud-slops overnight and, close to the altar, where people were packed together most densely, the smell of wet clothes and unwashed young bodies was pronounced.

The theme of the Pope's Sunday homily was the choice young people must make between "two voices competing for your souls." The rain stopped and bright sunshine bathed the park minutes before he began to speak.

One voice, he said, was "the false illusions and parodies of happiness" -- "the illusion of finding life by excluding God, of finding freedom by excluding moral truth and personal responsibility."

The other voice, he said, called young people to take part in a world of faith and spirituality, a world desperately needing a new sense of brotherhood and human solidarity, a world needing to be humanized with justice and sharing with the poor, and a world that "remove[s] the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil."

He looked significantly less energetic yesterday -- not surprisingly for an 82-year-old man -- than he did on his arrival in Toronto on Tuesday. His face was less animated, his voice not as clear. The tremor in his hands from his Parkinson's disease was more noticeable than it had been several days earlier. "You are young, and the Pope is old," he said. (The text of his homily had the words "and is tired," but he omitted them.) "Eighty or 82 years of life is not the same as 22 or 23. But the Pope still fully identifies with your hopes and aspirations."

He said: "Although I have lived through much darkness, under harsh totalitarian regimes [the Nazi occupation of Poland followed by the Communist dictatorship], I have seen enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young. Do not let that hope die. Stake your lives on it."

The mass -- the central rite of the Catholic church that re-enacts the traditional Last Supper that Jesus spent with his disciples before his Crucifixion -- was a sensuous spectacle of music, dance and liturgy, most of it performed on a huge altar beneath a 55-metre-high cross.

He twice said in his homily he was leaving Toronto to go home. In fact, he flies out of Toronto today for a three-day papal visit to Guatemala and Mexico.