Pope offers condolences to Poland, speaks of visiting Shroud of Turin, dodges scandal

Pope offers condolences to Poland, dodges scandal

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI offered condolences to Poland on Sunday following a plane crash that killed the country’s president and other senior officials, saying he was praying for the victims and the “beloved” Polish nation.

Poles holding up the red-and-white banners of the Polish flag sang mournfully after the pope spoke during his noon blessing from the papal retreat in Castel Gandolfo. Benedict said he had learned with sadness of the crash and the deaths.

“They perished during a trip to Katyn, the place of execution of thousands of Polish military officials assassinated 70 years ago,” Benedict said in Polish, referring to the Poles systematically executed by Josef Stalin’s NKVD, the forerunner to the KGB, in 1940.

“In expressing my profound condolences, I assure you from my heart of my prayers of intercession for the victims and support for the beloved Polish nation,” he said.

He noted that according to the church’s liturgical calendar, Sunday commemorates the canonization of Sister Faustina Kowalska, a mystic 20th-century Krakow nun beloved to the Polish faithful and the Polish-born Pope John Paul II.

It was Benedict’s first public appearance since revelations, reported Friday by the Associated Press, that as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he had resisted pleas from a California diocese to laicize a priest who had pleaded no contest to lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two boys.

Benedict made no mention of the scandal Sunday; his other remarks concerned his upcoming visit to the Shroud of Turin, which has gone on display for the first time in 10 years.

In a 1985 letter obtained by AP, Ratzinger — then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — acknowledged the accusations were grave but said laicization required careful study and more time.

The Vatican’s lawyer has insisted that the bishop was responsible for making sure the priest, the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, didn’t abuse while Rome processed his case. The Vatican’s lawyer says Rome eventually moved quickly to remove him from the priesthood.

Benedict hasn’t referred directly to the scandal since March 20, when the Vatican released a letter he wrote to the Irish faithful concerning the abuse crisis in that country.