AUSTRALIA:Pope Benedict arrived in Australia yesterday for an international Catholic youth festival and promised to apologise for a sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the church in the country.
The pontiff arrived in Sydney after more than 20 hours of flying from Rome to start the 10-day trip, the longest of his pontificate so far and the first to the Pacific.
In a message to young Australians, the pope urged them to look to God for the answers to their deep questions about the meaning of their lives.
"Many young people today lack hope. They are perplexed by the questions that present themselves ever more urgently in a confusing world, and they are often uncertain which way to turn for answers," he said.
"They see poverty and injustice and they long to find solutions. They are challenged by the arguments of those who deny the existence of God and they wonder how to respond. They see great damage done to the natural environment through human greed and they struggle to find ways to live in greater harmony with nature and with one another."
After a refuelling stop in Darwin, the pope arrived in Sydney, site of the Catholic Church's World Day of Youth festivities. He will rest for three days in a secluded residence outside the city before the official start of his visit on Thursday.
During an in-flight news conference with reporters shortly after the aircraft left Rome, the pope said everything possible would be done to prevent a recurrence of Australia's sexual abuse crisis and to promote healing among the victims. "It is essential for the church to reconcile, to prevent, to help and also to see [its] guilt," he said. "It must be clear, being a priest is incompatible with this behaviour because priests are in the service of our Lord," he said.
He also said he hoped the Anglican Church would not suffer a schism because of a decision to ordain women bishops and that he wanted his presence among hundreds of thousands of young people to be an impulse for the protection of the environment.
Broken Rites, a group which represents abuse victims in Australia, has a list of 107 convictions for sexual abuse but says the real number is higher and only a handful go to court. Victims say the Catholic Church in Australia continues to cover up abuse by clergy despite issuing an apology for past abuse and compensation. Some plan to protest during the visit.
Another issue during the in-flight news conference was the crisis gripping the Anglican Church, which risks a split over a decision by a church synod to ordain women bishops.
The decision, which follows the admission of women to the priesthood, has prompted Anglicans opposed to the move to express a desire to convert to Catholicism. "My essential contribution can only be prayer," he said in response to a question about the current crisis in the 70 million-member Anglican communion, whose mother church, the Church of England, split with Rome in 1534.
Next week Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is hosting the Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world.
But the conference faces mass defections by conservatives, mainly from Africa, Asia and South America, who were vehemently opposed to the ordination of openly gay US bishop Gene Robinson, who has been barred from the conference, and the blessing of same-sex marriages in Canada.
"The desire is that schisms and new fractures can be avoided," said Pope Benedict, adding that the Catholic Church would not "intervene immediately" in their decisions. - ( Reuters)