Pope admits church failed in scandal

September 17, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

EDINBURGH, Scotland

Pope Benedict XVI waded into the hostile atmosphere Thursday of highly secular Britain, admitting the Catholic Church did not act decisively or quickly enough to remove priests who molested children in his strongest comments yet on the worldwide sex-abuse crisis shaking his church.

In a visit unprecedented for the bitter opposition to his papacy, Benedict warned against “aggressive forms” of secularism. The German pope recalled how Britain had stood against “Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society.”

Benedict’s historic four-day state visit has been overshadowed by disgust over the abuse scandal and indifference in Britain, where Catholics are a minority of 10 percent and endured centuries of bloody persecution and discrimination until the early 19th century.

The trip is the first state visit by a pope to the U.K., and his meeting with Queen Elizabeth II was symbolically significant because of the historic divide between the officially Protestant nation and the Catholic Church.

Only 65,000 of the faithful had tickets to an open-air Mass at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow, far less than the 100,000 initially expected. The British media have been particularly hostile to the pope’s visit, noting its $18.7 million security cost to taxpayers at a time of austerity measures and job losses.

Many in Britain also are strongly opposed to Benedict’s hard line against homosexuality, abortion and using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS. Protests were planned, and “Pope Nope” T-shirts were spotted around London.