Child abuse or sexual abuse is an euphemism for what is really happening and has been happening for a very long time. Let's just call it what it is – child rape.
The Catholic Church, already having paid out billions of dollars in compensations ($2 billion in the US alone), is having to make some very tough choices. How much money should one pay for destroying the life of a child all the while maintaining a position of moral superiority?
On Saturday in Australia while addressing the Catholic Church's World Youth Day in Australia, Pope Benedict XVI made a public apology for the sexual abuse of children by clerics (see International Herald Tribune article here). The victims were not allowed to attend according to Broken Rites.
Broken Rites, an Australian group that campaigns for the victims of rape by religious authority figures, says 107 Australian priests and clergy (of all denominations) have appeared in courts over sex crimes.
Victims are fighting for compensation but bishops’ lawyers are arguing that the Catholic Church cannot be sued because it does not exist as a legal entity according to Broken Rites website.
The Pope has yet to apologize for how his Australian bishops deliberately covered up these crimes. In 2003, Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic Church's archbishop in Sydney, wrote a letter to an accuser and dismissed his claim of sexual abuse leveled against a priest.
Pell argued that no similar accusations were made against the priest. It later turned out that Pell had indeed received a similar accusation from another victim directed toward the same priest. Pell claimed that his letter was badly worded and was not trying to cover up the crime.
