Pope leads Holy Thursday ceremony
Posted April 1, 2010 8:47 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI urged priests to oppose violence as he led a ceremony dedicated to the priesthood Thursday, marking Holy Week with his church buffeted by clergy sex abuse scandals in Europe.
“As priests, we are called in fellowship with Jesus Christ, to be men of peace, we are called to oppose violence and trust in the greater power of love,” Benedict said in his Holy Thursday homily in St. Peter’s Basilica.
He made no mention of the scandals, as some thought he might do on a day the church pays tribute to its priests.
Spread out before him, in white robes, was row after row of priests, who responded in chorus to his chants in Latin. A choir of men and boys intoned solemn hymns.
The late morning Mass, the first of several appearances Benedict will make in the final days of Holy Week before Easter, was described by the Vatican as a sign of strict union between the pontiff in his role of pastor of the world’s 1-billion Catholics and his fellow priests.
In the evening, Benedict will wash the feet of 12 priests — a traditional sign of humility — at a Holy Thursday ceremony in St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome.
Benedict began the morning Mass by sprinkling incense, in a purifying rite, around the central altar of St. Peter’s.
Revelations of scandals involving pedophile priests have exploded across continental Europe this year, including when the pontiff was an archbishop in his native Germany. The myriad of reports come atop of years of allegations and court cases involving clergy abuse in schools and other church institutions in the United States, Ireland, Australia, Canada and elsewhere.
Victims are demanding that the pope take responsibility for what they say were decades of systematic coverups by church hierarchy of clergy abuse, including a widespread practice of transferring pedophile priests from one parish to another after allegations of rape or other sexual abuses were made.
