Pope accepts church faults

Marienfeld (Germany):
Pope Benedict XVI admitted there was “much that could be criticised’’ in the Catholic Church as he reached out to young people in an address to nearly three-quarters of a million pilgrims here on Saturday.

“There is much that could be criticised in the Church.
We know this and the Lord himself told us so: it is a net with good fish and bad fish,’’
the Pope said at a prayer vigil as part of the World Youth Day festival.

Benedict, making his first foreign visit as the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, recalled that his predecessor John Paul II had “asked pardon for the wrong that was done in the course of history through the words and deeds of the members of the Church.


Benedict Asks Muslim Leaders To Check Terror Growth

Earlier, in his first major address to Muslim leaders, the Pope said on Saturday they had a duty to help defeat terrorism and turn back the “wave of cruel fanaticism’’ that falsely uses religion to instigate hate. “Terrorism of any kind is a perverse and cruel decision which shows contempt for the sacred right to life and undermines the very foundations of all civil society,’’ he said in the prepared text of an address for leaders of Germany’s Muslims.

In the most straightforward and forceful language he has used on the topic since his election in April, the Pope said the world would be exposed to “the darkness of a new barbarism’’ unless religions worked together to combat terrorism. “I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up as one of our concerns the spread of terrorism,’’ he said. Agencies


from The Times of India ...