CardinalTarcisio Bertone said Benedict will deliver a message of “trust andhope” when he meets American clergy in St Patrick’s Cathedral in NewYork.
“Benedict will try to open the path of healing and reconciliation,”said Bertone, Vatican’s secretary of state. “So much suffering for thevictims, for the families of the victims and above all to the Churchbecause it was a contradiction with the great educational mission ofthe Church,” Bertone explained at the Treaty Hall of the ApostolicPalace.
US dioceses have been paying millions of dollars in claims since thecrisis erupted in Boston in 2002. Cardinal Bernard Law had resigned asarchbishop of Boston.
Catholics in Boston had hoped Benedict would visit their city in thewake of the scandal. Benedict, who will turn 81 in the April trip, isfit but could not meet all the invitations from US cities and had tolimit himself to Washington and New York.
Security threat
Bertone said he is aware of threats from Islamic extremists,but Benedict has visited predominantly Muslim Turkey in 2006, just twomonths after Benedict touched off a fury in the Islamic world when helinked Islam to violence in a speech in his native Germany.
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