**Up to half a million people are attending an open-air Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI at the Catholic shrine of Fatima in Portugal.**The Church said the crowd was a message of support for the Pope, who is marking the 93rd anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s reported apparitions there.
The Pope is currently on a four-day visit to the country.
On Tuesday, he acknowledged “sin” within the Church in a reference to the child abuse scandal rocking the Church.
“As far as the crisis and scandals are concerned, I think that the people wanted to show that they can distinguish between exceptions and the vast majority of their priests,” Portuguese episcopal spokesman Manuel Morujao told the AFP news agency.
“There’s been a certain generalisation and the Pope has even been accused of a cover-up,” he said.
Pilgrimage
On Wednesday, the Pope prayed in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary who wears a gold and silver crown in which the Pope’s predecessor - John Paul II - placed the bullet which nearly killed him in a failed assassination attempt on 13 May 1981.
“It is a profound consolation to know that you are crowned not only with the silver and gold of our joys and hopes, but also with the ‘bullet’ of our anxieties and sufferings,” he said.
Pope John Paul - who visited Fatima three times - believed that what he called “the unseen hand of the Virgin Mary” saved his life.
This was the same day on which the reported apparitions took place in 1917.
The chapel is built on the site where three shepherd children claimed to have had visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917.
The Pope later attended a candlelight procession in the huge esplanade in front of the shrine where he is celebrating Mass on Thursday.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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