THE TELEGRAPH: The Pope called on Catholic priests to behave like "angels and Jesus Christ's messengers" in his Easter Monday address, as new cases emerged of the Church failing to report abuses by paedophile clergy.
Benedict XVI said all Christians, but particularly priests, should be like angels and messengers of Christ's "victory over evil and death, the bearers of his divine love."
The 82-year-old pontiff was addressing hundreds of pilgrims at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence outside Rome, at the end of an Easter Week which has been overshadowed by the sex abuse crisis.
While senior Vatican figures have denounced criticism of the Church as a smear campaign against the Pope, fresh evidence is emerging almost daily of the Catholic hierarchy's failure, or refusal, to adequately deal with priests found guilty of molesting or raping children in their charge.
In Paris, a retired French bishop admitted that he had made a mistake when he accepted a convicted Canadian paedophile priest back into his diocese in the 1980s, but said the practice was at the time an accepted part of the Church's handling of abusive priests. >>> Nick Squires in Rome | Easter Monday, April 05, 2010
