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Five years ago today, Catholic Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. But the priest abuse scandal is casting a shadow over the anniversary. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  It was on April 19, 2005 that Chilean Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to make an announcement.  Cardinal Estevez said we have a Pope.  On that day, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took the name Benedict the 16th.  Today he marked the fifth anniversary of his election.  But the clerical sex abuse scandal cast a shadow over the proceedings.  The victims are demanding that the Pope take more personal responsibility for the crisis.  He seemed to acknowledge those demands this past weekend in Malta.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN:  The Pope met in Malta with men who say they were abused as children by priests.  Victims Joseph Magro and Lawrence Grech said they were happy with the meeting.

JOSEPH MAGRO:  I was fantastic, really fantastic.  We were waiting for it.  Everyone was crying, they felt sorry for us.

INTERVIEWER:  Did the Pope cry?

MAGRO: Yes.  He had tears in his eyes.

LAWRENCE GRECH:  He told me I’m very proud and I pray for you to have the courage to tell your story.

HADDEN: The Pope’s meeting was a long awaited gesture for many people angered by allegations of sex abuse in the church.  The Pope’s own actions as an Archbishop in Munich and later as a Cardinal at the helm of the Vatican’s Morals Office have come under question.  The rise in cases of abuse across Europe this year prompted the Pope to send a letter to Irish victims last month.  Several days ago he alluded to the scandal during a mass when he cited a need for penance in the church.  But critics have demanded bolder condemnation and concrete steps to prevent further abuses.  Robert MIckens covers the Vatican for The Tablet, a Catholic weekly magazine.  He doesn’t think this Pope has the right kind of personality to deal effectively with this kind of crisis.

ROBERT MICKENS:  He’s never dealt with people.  It’s quite amazing.  He served for about 10 or 11 months as parish priest right after his ordination and it seems during that period, freshly ordained, he was preparing to go back to finish up a doctorate and he wanted to get back into academia.  If you read is memoirs and interviews that’s he’s given he was just terrified at the thought that he might have to end up being a parish priest.

HADDEN: Pope watchers say that the reclusive Pontiff has made the problem worse by surrounding himself with Cardinals who have not always said the right things in public.  Italian analyst Carlo Politi says the Vatican spokesmen has displayed a siege mentality.

CARLO POLITI:  Out of the blue Cardinal Bertone who is now Secretary of State can say that there is a direct link between pedophilia and homosexuality.  So you have a crisis about child abuse and somebody opens a new crisis with gays and during Easter time the official preacher of the Pontifical house opened another crisis with the Jews just speaking that the Pope today and the church was under attack with the same feeling like the Jews were persecuted during Nazi times.  So it shows that there is a sort of confusion in the government structures.

HADDEN: The Pope’s gesture in Malta may help the Vatican appear more conciliatory.  The Holy See is also trying to be more transparent.  It has published its internal guidelines for dealing with abuse cases on its web page for all to see.  Many Catholics though, say they’re still waiting for a clear and public speech by the Pope, yet here in Rome, such demands are more muted.  This man, Maurizzio Caprara, defends the church.

MAURIZZIO CAPRARA:  Haven’t we some workers involved in pedophilia?  Haven’t we some TV producer, some teachers involved in pedophilia?  Some journalists involved in pedophilia?  So every time you listen to talk about this its about something involved with the church.

HADDEN: Priests are humans like everyone else says Rome resident Amelia Vincetorra, as she leave mass on a recent afternoon.  She says the church is not just some bureaucratic institution, it’s the house of Jesus, so we lay people have a duty to bring Jesus’ love into our everyday lives, to see it through his eyes.  Because when we do this, we gain credibility she says, and we can be an example for the priests.  That sympathetic tone is also reflected in most Italian media.  Political Scientist James Walston at the American University in Rome says that’s because Italians are used to this sort of thing.

JAMES WALSTON:  The context in which they work in Italy is one in which scandal is the norm.  There is almost no such thing as scandal.  And the Vatican has taken that sort of culture and made it their own.

HADDEN: Walston says the Pope will probably survive this crisis, but he says the Catholic Church could suffer in other ways.

WALSTON:  What is certainly happening is that in many parts of the world, Germany where the church depends financial on the support, on the tithe of the faithful, a lot of people are removing their names from the list and are not going to pay their tithe.  And this will be extremely serious, it’s not just a moral blow, it’s an economic blow.

HADDEN: Raising money isn’t the only challenge facing the Catholic Church down the road.  Finding new recruits to the priesthood is also getting tougher.  And the vetting process is due to get stricter to prevent more pedophiles from entering the ministry.  For The World, I’m Gerry Hadden, Rome.

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