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CNN Sunday Morning

Pope John Paul II Addresses Crowd of Young Catholics in Toronto

Aired July 28, 2002 - 11:10   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: The religious celebration is under way in Canada. Thousands of Catholic faithful have gathered there today to see the pope perform the final mass for World Youth Day. CNN national correspondent Frank Buckley joins us now from Toronto with more. Good morning, Frank.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Renay. Pope John Paul II celebrating mass here before hundreds of thousands of young people gathered here in Toronto for World Youth Day. Right now, the pope is -- we're observing a liturgy of the Eucharist. Young people bringing bread and wine up to the pope. This massive stage that you see constructed with the people now in sunlight, the weather has cleared a bit. No longer the rain, and we still have some wind, but no longer the rain that so dampened these folks overnight and through the morning hours.

Earlier, we saw the delivery of the homily by Pope John Paul II, and during that, he addressed the issue of the sex abuse crisis in the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE JOHN PAUL II: If you love Jesus, love the church. Do not be discouraged by the sins and failings of some of her members. The harm done by some priests and religious to the young and vulnerable...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BUCKLEY: And the statement went on to say that "that fills us all with a deep sense of sadness and shame." The pope then went on to say, "but I think of the vast practice majority of dedicated and generous priests and religious whose only wish is to serve and do good." And John Allen of the "National Catholic Reporter," that really got quite a bit of applause here.

JOHN ALLEN, "NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER": It did, yeah. I think the pope wanted to deliver a two-fold message. The first element of the message is, there is a source of sadness and shame here that we have to acknowledge, but on the other hand, we cannot forget that the vast majority of priests are not guilty of this heinous misconduct that has been so many shocking revelations we've seen in the last several months. And I think it was the second element of that message, that is that most priests are good guys doing good work that really got an enormous rousing response from this crowd. Bear in mind that many of the young people here are the kind of young person who would choose to come to World Youth Day, it's usually the more dedicated, committed, faithful Catholic coming from these good Catholic families, and certainly this message, support your priests, is one that played will with them.

BUCKLEY: I guess the question next is, how will this go over with those who have been hurt and those who have been so vocal in the United States?

ALLEN: Well, you've got to understand that I think the pain of sexual abuse, no matter where it comes from, is a pain that stays with you a lifetime, and it is not easily healed. And I think that there are going to be victims and victims' rights group who will certainly appreciate and welcome the words of the pope this morning, but I think will make two other points.

One is, the pope did not respond to a request from Canadian sex abuse victims for a personal meeting, and that will be disappointing to them. And secondly, I think the bottom line is they'll be waiting to see how is this translated into actions. In other words, those new policies that the American bishops adopted in Dallas, will they be implemented and will they, in fact, prevent further sex abuse in the church? And that's not of course a question we can answer here this morning.

BUCKLEY: Can you give us an insight into how this decision may have come about, as to actually address this topic? Because throughout this past week, it was not a part of the agenda. That meeting did not take place. How does this come about that the pope actually discusses this in his homily?

ALLEN: Well, bear in mind, you know, I think the best parallel case here is remember when the pope touched down on the first day of his trip. Learned commentators such as myself were saying he would be brought off the plane in a lift. And in fact, he walked down the steps, because he decided for himself that this is what he wanted to do, and I suspect that language in today's homily was very much the same sort of thing.

I think certainly the Vatican officials we talked to were saying do not expect any reference to the crisis. Yet, this morning, there it was. Direct and really firm and certainly in some ways the firmest, clearest, strongest language we've heard on the topic from the pope yet. I, therefore, think, Frank, this was very much a personal choice of John Paul II.

BUCKLEY: And we should say that, along those lines, John, thank you very much -- I'll just say that at the news conference following the airport welcoming ceremony, I asked the spokesman for the Vatican if anyone tried to stop the pope from coming down the steps when he surprised everyone by coming down the front steps of that aircraft, and that created quite a laugh among the Vatican press corps. And the spokesmen who said, "oh, no, no, no, we don't tell the pope what to do in that particular kind of a situation."

So Renay, back to you.

SAN MIGUEL: If he wants to walk down the steps, he will do so.

Frank Buckley live in Toronto, thank you very much for that report.

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