Pope Benedict arrived in Australia yesterday for an international Catholic youth festival and promised to apologise for a sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Church in the country.
The 81-year-old Pontiff arrived in Sydney after more than 20 hours of flying from Rome to start the 10-day trip, the longest of his pontificate so far and the first to the Pacific.
In a message to young Australians at the start of his trip, the Pope urged them to look to God for the answers to their deep questions about the meaning of their lives.
"Many young people today lack hope. They are perplexed by the questions that present themselves ever more urgently in a confusing world, and they are often uncertain which way to turn for answers," he said.
"They see poverty and injustice and they long to find solutions. They are challenged by the arguments of those who deny the existence of God and they wonder how to respond. They see great damage done to the natural environment through human greed and they struggle to find ways to live in greater harmony with nature and with one another," he said.
After a refuelling stop in Darwin, he arrived in Sydney, site of the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Youth festivities. He will rest for three days in a secluded residence outside the city before the official start of his visit on Thursday.
During an in-flight news conference with reporters shortly after the plane left Rome, the Pope said everything possible would be done to prevent a recurrence of Australia's sexual abuse crisis and to promote healing among the victims.
He also said he hoped the Anglican Church would not suffer a schism because of a decision to ordain women bishops and that he wanted his presence among hundreds of thousands of young people to be an impulse for the protection of the environment.
"It is essential for the Church to reconcile, to prevent, to help and also to see (its) guilt," he said. "It must be clear that being a priest is incompatible with this behaviour because priests are in the service of our Lord," he said. The issue of sexual abuse of minors by priests has been a major scandal in several countries around the world after local churches were found to have moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them or reporting them to authorities.
When he visited the US last April the Pope spoke repeatedly about the "shame" the scandal had wrought on the Church and he met with abuse victims.
Broken Rites, a group which represents abuse victims in Australia, has a list of 107 convictions for sexual abuse but says the real number is higher and only a handful go to court.
Victims say the Catholic Church in Australia continues to cover up abuse by clergy despite issuing an apology for past abuse and compensation. Some plan to protest during the visit.
Another main issue during the in-flight news conference was the crisis gripping the Anglican Church, which risks schism over a decision by a Church synod to ordain women bishops.
The decision, which follows the admission of women to the priesthood, has prompted a number of Anglicans opposed to the move to express a desire to convert to Catholicism.
"My essential contribution can only be prayer," he said in response to a question about the current crisis in the 70-million-member Anglican communion, whose mother Church, the Church of England, split with Rome in 1534.