Pope should speak about scandals

How the Catholic Church is handling the latest round of sexual abuse scandals, which includes blaming the media, is embarrassing.

In Vatican City on Sunday, Angelo Sodano, a cardinal and the dean of the College of Cardinals stood before Pope Benedict XVI to give a speech of support.

According to The New York Times, Sodano said "Holy Father, the people of God are with you, and do not let themselves be impressed by the gossip of the moment, by the challenges that sometimes strike at the community of believers."

But Sodano is wrong. Many of the people of God, we are assuming he meant Catholics, are enraged that another scandal over sexual abuse and the cover-ups. Some are calling for the pope's resignation, which clearly shows that they are not in support of the pontiff.

Advising the pope, who has not publicly addressed the topic, to continue his silence on the scandal does not seem wise. Insulting the media doesn't seem wise either.

Even if you are not Catholic and don't follow the news you are probably aware that this is not the first time the Catholic Church has faced claims of rampant sexual abuse.

Implying that the media is leading a smear campaign is not only wrong but also foolish.

We are not sure who the Catholic Church thinks is naive enough to believe that the media made up the claims of pedophile priests from people in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France and the United States.

Perhaps if this all had not happened so many times before, people would be angrier at the media for tarnishing the church's good reputation.

Except the church does not have one. In June of 2002 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed to bar pedophile priests from acting as clerics but did not ban them from the priesthood.

As a follow up to the decades-long abuse in the United States, Benedict met victims of sexual abuse in April 2008. Although the U.S. Catholic Church has paid more than $2 billion dollars in settlements to victims of abuse since 1992, the pope needed to visit victims to calm the anger felt by Catholics in America.

This plan worked to boost the pope's reputation for a bit, but with this new set of scandals those victims are gossiping, to use the word the Catholic Church keeps throwing around. This week, National Public Radio interviewed some of the victims who met Benedict.  They spoke about how annoyed they are to see the same problem resurface.

The problem of pedophile priests is one that can be fixed. Keeping silent and blaming understandably outraged individuals does not seem like the first step toward a solution, though.