THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Pope Benedict XVI appealed to believers not to leave the Catholic Church as he arrived for a four-day visit to his native Germany.
The Pope said on the flight from Rome that he understood why some people – especially sex abuse victims and their loved ones – might say "this is no longer my Church".
But he urged Catholics to see the Church was made of both good and bad, and was struggling to right the wrongs committed in its ranks.
Germany has been rocked by the clerical sex scandals that have swept across Europe in the past two years.
"The Church is a net of the Lord that pulls in good fish and bad fish," he said. "We have to learn to live with the scandals and work against the scandals from inside the great net of the Church."
A record 181,000 German Catholics officially quit the Church last year.
The Church in Germany has received almost 600 requests for compensation for victims of sexual and physical abuse, while a victims' association estimates that more than 2,000 people were mistreated by Catholic priests in recent decades.
The Pope was met at the airport by Christian Wulff, the German president – a Catholic who has divorced and remarried in defiance of Church rules – and Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In an interview published on Thursday, Mr Wulff said he hoped Benedict would loosen some of those rules. » | Thursday, September 22, 2011
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