The New Nation - Internet Edition

DURING his recent high-profile visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI chided Americans for 'a moral breakdown' that he said had fueled the church's child sex abuse scandal. The pontiff berated the US Catholic bishops for their poor handling of the scandal surrounding sexual abuse of children in the church. Describing clerics who sexually abuse children as 'gravely immoral', he warned that scourge of paedophilia 'is found not only in your dioceses but in every sector of society.' It calls for a determined collective response, he said, but did not outline any firm action that the Vatican intended to take to purge the responsible priests.

Ahead of the Pope's visit, a polygamist compound owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Texas emptied of more than 400 children was the site of pervasive sexual abuse. Girls as young as 13 were 'spiritually married' to men who claimed several wives and were forced to have sex with their significantly older husbands for the purpose of having children. A number of the children recovered and removed were unable to provide names of their biological parents. The children are now in state custody.

Almost at the same time in another far away continent, widespread sexual abuse of children was ongoing in state care in South Australia for decades with an inquiry saying that the abuse was allegedly perpetrated by foster parents, social workers, teachers, priests and strangers. Some foster children were used at paedophile parties for sexual gratification as revealed by a former Supreme Court judge who is now heading an official inquiry. The abuse occurred in church institutions, the Salvation Army, government and non-government homes for children and youth shelters and foster homes and bear testimony of breakdown of the society as sounded rightly by the Pope.