**In his first foreign trip since sex abuse scandals in Europe and the US broke, Pope Benedict has said the Church has been “wounded by its sins”.**But he did not directly refer to the sex abuse scandals sweeping the Church, a BBC correspondent says.
The pontiff is making a pilgrimage in the footsteps of St Paul.
The Pope’s flight was one of the few to leave the Italian capital, Rome, amid the disruption caused by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.
In brief remarks to journalists on board the flight from Rome, Pope Benedict XVI talked vaguely about sins that have wounded the Church.
“Malta loves Christ who loves his Church which is his body, even if this body is wounded by our sins,” he said.
But his mention of a dark cloud that is over part of Europe referred not to the Church’s crisis of credibility over sexual abuse scandals, but to the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which at one moment threatened to scupper his pilgrimage, says the BBC’s David Willey in Malta.
Maltese President George Abela made the first direct reference to the abuse crisis in his welcome speech at the airport.
The Republic of Malta, whose population is strongly Catholic, has no state religion, the president pointed out to the Pope.
Then he referred to the criminal case currently before a Maltese court in which three Catholic priests are accused of sexually abusing 10 Maltese men when they were children in a Catholic orphanage.
“Justice must be seen to be done,” the president told the Pope.
‘Penance’
It is still unclear whether Pope Benedict will agree to meet in private, during his short stay, the alleged sex abuse victims, our correspondent adds.
The Pope’s brief visit to the islands was originally planned as a pilgrimage commemorating the shipwreck of Saint Paul on the Mediterranean island in 60AD.
The Pope has made no direct reference to the sex abuse scandals since writing a letter last month to the Catholics of Ireland expressing dismay at official reports of thousands of cases of Irish priests molesting children over a period of decades.
On Thursday, the Pope called on Roman Catholics to “do penance” for their sins, in an apparent reference to the crisis.This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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