AN ESTIMATED 150,000 faithful packed into St Peter’s Square yesterday to express their solidarity with Pope Benedict on the occasion of a “Papa Day”, organised by the Italian Episcopal Conference.
Parishioners and members of a wide variety of Catholic lay groups from all over Italy answered the organiser’s call to rally round the beleaguered Pope. “We have gathered here today because we want to be seen to stand in support of Pope Benedict XVI, just in the way that children would do with their father,” said the public address system at the beginning of the ceremony.
There were further signs of support among the crowd for Benedict, with pilgrims bearing banners that read “Together with the pope” and “Your holiness, you are not alone, the whole church is with you”.
Yesterday’s rally came just two days after Pope Benedict returned from a successful, four-day pastoral visit to Portugal, highlighted by a visit to the Marian shrine of Fatima, a point the pontiff underlined yesterday: “It is wonderful to see this great crowd in St Peter’s Square, just as it was very moving for me to see the huge crowds at Fatima, a crowd which, at the school of Mary, prayed for the conversion of hearts . . . Today you show the great affection and profound closeness of the church and the Italian people to the pope and your priests . . . because, in the commitment to spiritual and moral renewal, we can always do better.”
Undoubtedly, one of the most significant moments of the pope’s visit to Portugal came on the papal aircraft on his way there when, in reference to the sex abuse scandal currently shaking the Catholic Church, he said “the suffering of the church also comes from within the church, because sin exists in the church”.
In his homily, yesterday, the pope repeated this theme when saying: “The real enemy to fear and to fight is sin, spiritual evil – which at times, unfortunately, also infects members of the church.”