Unexpected sides of pope poking through

BY ELLIS HENICAN

April 18, 2008

You can't say this pope is ducking controversy.

For three straight days, Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out on the priest sex-abuse scandal -- and Thursday met with victims from Boston. All that was before he even landed in New York. God only knows what issues we'll inspire him to address during his weekend here.

When the Holy Father decided to skip Boston on this trip, some pope-o-philes knew immediately what that meant: He was trying to avoid "ground zero" of the worst embarrassment in modern Catholic history, with thousands of youthful victims and $2 billion in legal judgments already paid.

The way the pope's been speaking up, however, I'm half-expecting him to tell his JFK-bound pilot on Shepherd One this morning: "Let's swing by Logan first."

Clearly, Benedict XVI is not a cuddly pope. He doesn't have the charisma or the common touch that his beloved predecessor, John Paul II, was so famous for. If JP2 hadn't been pope, he'd have probably been a movie star.

If Benedict weren't pope, he might have ended up a university professor or the assistant principal for discipline at a Catholic high school.

"Detention!" he'd be growling at some miscreant sophomore. No, you don't get nicknamed "God's Rottweiler" for no reason at all.

But give this pope his props, as he finally reaches the large stage of New York. His message isn't all finger-wagging and doctrinal purity.

"Americans have always been a people of hope," he told an overflow congregation Thursday at Washington's Nationals Park, a preview of Sunday's Yankee Stadium mass. And with some blessed clarity, he's facing church scandal No. 1.

"No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse," he said at the stadium Thursday. But he pressed on anyway.

"I spoke with the bishops about this," he said. "I encourage each of you to do what you can to foster healing and reconciliation, and to assist those who have been hurt."

There's a term for this in ecclesiastical circles.

It's called a start.