The Pope admitted for the first time yesterday that the Roman Catholic Church must accept responsibility for the child sexual abuse scandal that has engulfed it.Speaking on a visit to Portugal, Pope Benedict XVI said that "sins inside the church" must be blamed, rather than "outside enemies".
He added that "forgiveness is no substitute for justice" and that the church had to "relearn prayer and penance".
His comments were hailed from within the Vatican hierarchy, with one senior figure on the Pope's staff saying that it amounted to a "sea change" in the way that the church is dealing with the scandals.
Pope Benedict's five-year papacy has been rocked by allegations that the Vatican protected paedophile priests from prosecution in Europe and the United States.
Even after yesterday's contrite statement, however, the Vatican's critics insisted the Pope had still not done nearly enough to repair the damage or protect children from a culture of secrecy that allowed priests to rape and molest children unchecked for decades.
Punished
Some noted that while the Pontiff had accepted some bishops' resignations, no bishop had been actively punished or defrocked, not even those who admitted molesting children.
"Many are tiring of hearing about his 'strong comments'. They want to see strong action," said David Clohessy, the director of the main US victims' group, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
The Pope's comments came just hours after Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said there were "strong forces" still at work in the Catholic Church in Ireland "that would prefer that the truth did not emerge" about clerical child sex abuse.
Until now, the Vatican and individual cardinals and bishops have sought to lay the blame for allegations of priestly abuse on the media, the Devil, the permissiveness of the 1960s, and on petty gossip and homosexuality. But the Pope struck a very different note.
"Attacks on the Pope and the church come not only from outside the church, but the suffering of the church comes from inside the church, from sins that exist inside the church," he told journalists on the plane to Lisbon.
"This we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way. The church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness, but also the necessity of justice."
The Vatican claims the Pope has taken the lead in investigating abuse, as Pontiff and previously as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Thousands of wellwishers waved Vatican and Portuguese flags as he passed through the suburbs of Lisbon in his popemobile. He then held Mass for 80,000 people on the banks of the Tagus.
The highlight of the Pope's visit will be a visit to the shrine at Fatima tonight.
Up to 500,000 people are expected to attend his open-air Mass. His visit marks the 10th anniversary of the beatification of two of three children who said in 1917 that they saw a vision of the Virgin Mary there.SIC: II