The New Nation - Internet Edition

DURING his last high-profile visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI chided Americans for 'a moral breakdown' he said had fueled the church's child sex abuse scandal. In a speech to US Catholic bishops in Washington, the pontiff berated the bishops for their poor handling of the scandal. 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.

Ahead of the Pope's visit, a polygamist compound owned by the Fundamentalist Church in Texas emptied of more than 400 children was the site of pervasive sexual abuse where girls were groomed to accept sex at puberty and boys indoctrinated to perpetuate the cycle as reported by AFP news agency quoting officials. 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 were taken to state custody. Almost at the same time 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 headed an official inquiry. And atrocious events like an Australian man's fathering a baby with daughter bear the testimony of breakdown of the society as sounded rightly by the Pope.