Pontiff prepares apology for paedophile priests

Pope Benedict XVI arrived for a week-long celebration of youth and religion yesterday with a promise to apologise to Australian victims of sexual abuse in the Church.

Benedict, 81, hopes that the longest trip of his Pontificate, which culminates in Sydney's World Youth Day celebrations, will reinvigorate the Australian Catholic church.

Even as he was welcomed by Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, local Catholic leaders sought to minimise the fallout from a sex abuse case and criticism of tough new police powers to protect pilgrims from “annoyance” by critics of the Church.

During his flight from Rome, the pontiff said he would apologise to sex abuse victims, as he did during a visit to America in April. “We have to see what was insufficient in our behaviour and how we can prevent, and heal, reconcile,” he said. “It must be clear, being a priest is incompatible with this behaviour because priests are in the service of Our Lord.”

His comments echoed repeated references to the shame that paedophile priests had wrought on the Church during his US visit. The Church has been criticised for moving abusers between parishes rather than defrocking them or reporting them to police. Leaked documents last week deeply embarrassed the Pope's friend and Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, who admitted to a mistake in a “badly worded” letter written in 2003 to a man who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a priest in 1982. The Cardinal wrongly told him an inquiry had not upheld his complaint.

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