Aboard the papal plane, May 11, 2010 / 11:07 am
Speaking aboard the papal plane on the way to Portugal, Pope Benedict XVI said the message of Fatima shows that attacks on the Pope and the Church also come from sins inside the Church. These internal attacks are seen in “a really terrifying way” in sexual abuse, he remarked while calling for penance and purification.
He made his comments to reporters while traveling to Portugal, the site of a 1917 Marian apparition near the town of Fatima. He was asked if the Fatima apparition’s predictions of times of trial for the Church could be applied to the sexual abuse crisis.
In the message of Fatima, Pope Benedict answered, we can discover that attacks on the Pope and the Church “come not only from the outside, but the suffering of the Church comes from inside the Church, from sins that exist inside the Church.”
“This we have always known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way. The biggest weight on the Church doesn’t come from the enemies outside but is born from sin inside the Church.