This blog is about priests and paedophilia. Even to write these two words in the same sentence fills me with shame and sorrow: shame that a few priests – much fewer than in the popular imagination – have so woefully betrayed their office; sorrow for the victims whose lives have been indelibly marked by the crimes done to them.
As we know, the media likes to speak of “paedophile priests”, as if all priests must somehow have a shadow of guilt by association with the few. And this same media raised the subject many times before the visit of Pope Benedict to Britain, thus trying to create a miasma of disgust and disapproval even before the Pope reached these shores. The state visit itself was a resounding success and the Holy Father not only met some of the victims of abuse, as he has done in other countries, but raised the subject head-on himself on the plane bringing him here.
