This article comes from the Associated Press. To sample some of the scathing responses coming out of the Jewish world and beyond, see this article from Jerusalem Post.
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Pope's priest: Criticism like anti-Semitism
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher is likening accusations against the pope and the church in the sex abuse scandal to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.
Reaction from Jewish groups and victims of clerical sex abuse ranged from skepticism to fury.
The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in a Good Friday sermon, with the pope listening to him in St. Peter's Basilica, that a Jewish friend has said the accusations remind him of the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism."
The 82-year-old pontiff looked weary as he sat near the central altar during the early evening prayer service before he was scheduled to take part in a candlelit Way of the Cross procession near the Colosseum which commemorates Christ’s suffering before his crucifixion.
Thousands of Holy Week pilgrims were in St. Peter’s Square as the church defends itself against accusations that Benedict had a role in covering up sex abuses cases.
The “coincidence” that Passover falls in the same week as Easter celebrations, said Cantalamessa, a Franciscan who offers reflections at Vatican Easter and Advent services, prompted him to think about Jews.
“They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” the preacher said.
Quoting from the letter from the friend, who wasn’t identified by Cantalamessa, the preacher said that he was following “‘with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world.”’
“The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,”’ Cantalamessa said his friend wrote him.
'Repulsive, obscene'
Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, said Cantalamessa's remarks were "a so-far-unheard-of insolence."
"It is repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive toward all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust," Kramer said. "So far I haven't seen St. Peter burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests. I'm without words. The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims."
Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, U.S. director of interreligious relations for the American Jewish Committee, called the comments "an unfortunate use of language."
"The collective violence against the Jews resulted in the death of 6 million, while the collective violence spoken of here has not led to murder and destruction, but perhaps character assault," Greenebaum said.
Quoting from the letter from the Jewish friend, who wasn't identified by Cantalamessa, the preacher said that he was following "'with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world.'"
"The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,'" Cantalamessa said his friend wrote him.
In the sermon, he referred to the sexual abuse of children by clergy, saying “unfortunately, not a few elements of the clergy are stained” by the violence.” But Cantalamessa said he didn’t want to dwell on the abuse of children, saying “there is sufficient talk outside of here.”
Peter Isely, the Milwaukee-based director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, denounced the anti-Semitism analogy as "reckless and irresponsible."
"They're sitting in the papal palace, they're experiencing a little discomfort, and they're going to compare themselves to being rounded up or lined up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz?" he said. "You cannot be serious."
Benedict didn’t speak after the homily, but, in a tired-sounding voice, chanted prayers. He leaned up to remove a red cloth covering a tall crucifix, which was passed to him by an aide. He took off his shoes, knelt and prayed before the cross.
'Wrongly intended desire'
Meanwhile, the head of Germany's Roman Catholic bishops said in an unusually forthright Good Friday statement that the church in the pope's homeland failed to help victims of clerical sex abuse because it wanted to protect its reputation.
Clerics have neglected helping abuse victims by a "wrongly intended desire to protect the church's reputation," Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg said on the day that Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The news about sexual and physical abuse of children by priests and other employees leaves the church with "sadness, horror and shame," he said.
The Catholic church has been rocked by a widening abuse scandal in Benedict's homeland and across Europe in recent weeks as hundreds of allegations of harsh physical punishment and sexual abuse have been made.
Reports of new cases have been cropping up almost daily in neighboring Austria, where the country's top Catholic, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, held a service for victims and acknowledged church guilt in the controversy this week.
Austria's Platform Of Those Affected By Church Violence — a group that includes victims, psychologists, psychiatrists and lawyers — said about 150 people had called a new hot line, with about a third claiming they had been sexually abused and the rest reporting physical or verbal abuse.
"We're dealing with a lot of sadistic education methods from the 60s and 70s," Holger Eich, who supervises the hot line, told reporters. "I hope that most of these methods are no longer being used in church institutions — but I'm not sure."
'Great injustice'
Zollitsch condemned what he called "the appalling crimes of sexual abuse" and urged the German Catholic church to face its painful record on the handling these cases.
The church is appalled by the harm done to victims who were often unable to speak about their pain for decades, he said.
"Wounds were inflicted that are hardly curable," the bishop added.
Zollitsch urged all priests in his diocese to pray during Good Friday services for abuse victims whose bodies and souls were hurt within the church's community, to whom "great injustice was done."
Cardinal Karl Lehman, the bishop of the German city of Mainz, echoed Zollitsch's tough stance and called perpetrators of sexual abuse traitors of the gospel.
"They weaken and betray the gospel of Jesus Christ who himself has put a special emphasis on the children," he said is his homily.
In 1980, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, allowed a pedophile priest to be transferred from the northwestern city of Essen to undergo therapy in Munich, where he was then archbishop.
The Munich archdiocese says Benedict wasn't involved in a lower-ranking official's later decision to allow the priest to return to pastoral work. The Rev. Peter Hullermann went on to work with youths again and was sentenced for sexual abuse in 1986.
Germany's prestigious Regensburg Domspatzen boys choir once led by the pope's brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, as well as the school that sends many students to the choir, also have faced allegations of sexual and more general physical abuse.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor who oversees sex-crime cases in Milan, Italy, told the Il Giornale newspaper that there is a long list of priests who are under investigation for alleged sex abuse. He did not elaborate. An Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims.
Italian prosecutor Pietro Forno said that once investigations have gotten under way, church officials have never tried to interfere or hinder the probes. But he added, "In the many years that I have dealt with this, never — and I stress, never — have I received a single complaint from bishops, or priests. And that's a bit odd."
The interview with Il Giornale, a conservative national daily, was published Thursday.
On Holy Thursday, cardinals across Europe used their sermons to defend Pope Benedict XVI from accusations he played a role in covering up sex abuse scandals, and an increasingly angry Vatican sought to deflect any criticism in the Western media.
