Under cloud of scandal, and ash, pope arrives in Malta

A visit to this tiny, Catholic island halfway between Sicily and North Africa has traditionally been a love-fest for visiting pontiffs. Divorce and abortion are illegal here, and in a population of 443,000, one in three children attends Catholic school.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Staff |
Source & Credit: Times Argus | April 18, 2010
By RACHEL DONADIO  | The New York Times

VALLETTA, Malta — In spite of the cloud of volcanic ash drifting south from Iceland, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in this Catholic nation on Saturday evening in his first foreign trip since a sexual abuse crisis began engulfing the Roman Catholic Church.

His visit — commemorating the 1,950th anniversary of the shipwreck of Saint Paul on Malta — comes at the most turbulent moment in Benedict's five-year-old papacy, which is struggling to manage a torrent of allegations that the church hierarchy did not move swiftly to discipline priests who had sexually abused minors.

Faced with new information that has called into question Benedict's role as bishop of Munich in 1980 and then as prefect of the Vatican office that handled abuse cases, the Vatican has gone on the defensive against its critics, although Benedict began to strike a different tone when he directly addressed the situation for the first time on Thursday.


"Now under the attacks of the world, which speaks to us of our sins, we see that the ability to repent is a grace, and we see how it is necessary to repent," he said in a homily at a private, untelevised Mass. But he has yet to take the type of strong actions that victims' families and church critics have clamored for.

It was unclear if the pope would use this trip to continue to try to address such concerns. He has two speeches planned Saturday, and the Vatican has left open the possibility that he will meet with Maltese men who say they were sexually abused by priests at an orphanage.

But on the hourlong plane flight here, he met with reporters for five minutes but did not directly address the issue or take questions, choosing once again to use oblique language that a Vatican spokesman said could be considered "reflections" on the abuse crisis. Just as Paul's "shipwreck brought Malta the good fortune of getting the faith, we can also think that the wrecks of life can bring God's project to us and be useful for a new start of our life," Benedict said, according to Reuters.

A group of 10 Maltese men who have filed a criminal complaint against priests they say abused them when they were children at the orphanage in the 1980s have asked to meet with Benedict. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said earlier last week that he could not rule out such a meeting, but that it would have to take place away from "media pressure."

Lawrence Grech, 37, one of the 10 men who filed the suit and said he was sexually molested for years, said he hoped Benedict's visit would call attention to their case. "What I want is my chapter to be closed, and justice to be done," Grech said in a telephone conversation. "This is not about money; this is about information." The archbishop of Malta met with the group for the first time last week, and the Vatican's chief internal prosecutor who handles abuse cases, Monsignor Charles J. Scicluna, who is from Malta, has also agreed to meet with them.

A visit to this tiny, Catholic island halfway between Sicily and North Africa has traditionally been a love-fest for visiting pontiffs. Divorce and abortion are illegal here, and in a population of 443,000, one in three children attends Catholic school. But in recent days billboards advertising Benedict's visit have been vandalized.

Yet on Saturday the narrow streets of downtown Valletta, a harborside city, were festooned with yellow-and-white banners in anticipation of the visit, and posters of Benedict adorned some shop windows.

Some local residents said they were glad Benedict was coming. Domenic Caruana, who sat beside a truck selling fresh vegetables, said he did not understand the criticism of Benedict over the sex abuse crisis. "Why?" he asked. "Why is everybody speaking out about things that happened 50 years ago?"

"When he comes, he will have big support," Caruana added.

Read original atrticle here: Under cloud of scandal, and ash, pope travels to Malta