Let the healing continue
Pope Benedict startled the media and frankly, the Church when he started to address the priest scandal while flying over the Atlantic on his way to America. During his apostolic journey here, he repeatedly addressed the crisis, and pretty much stunned the country if not the world by his sincere, deeply compassionate and fatherly actions to reconcile the family and heal the wounds.
Olan Horne, 48, a survivor of clerical sex abuse, believes that Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States marks a turning point in the way victims of sexual abuse are treated in the Catholic Church.
“I saw it in his face, heard his voice. He understands,” said Horne, one of six survivors who met Thursday with the pope.
This profoundly important event, the private meeting the Pope arranged with abuse victims kept secret from the media beforehand, did more than anybody short of Jesus Christ could have done to begin the healing process of so great and painful a rupture.
Benedict himself brought the shameful issue up last week at three masses at Washington Nationals and Yankee stadiums and at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, at a New York seminary campus and at a press conference aboard his plane Shepherd One. He also discussed the issue with the bishops in Washington.
“Benedict told the bishops to meet with survivors as he had; this pope gets it,” said Horne. “I like to say that I’m from Missouri and you are going to have to Show Me. Benedict showed me.”
May the healing exponentially grow. With the help and humility of the nation’s bishops, who have also been shown the way.
