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An Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVIApril 19, 2005 His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI Your Holiness, We are writing to congratulate you on your election as Pope and to offer our prayers to you as the Catholic Church around the world and in the United States faces tremendous challenges in this time of transition. We pray for your leadership, courage, and abiding spiritual faith for the Church to continue to address these challenges, and to thrive as an institution that lives out Christ’s message. Voice of the Faithful is an organization, and movement, of lay men and women that wish to be actively engaged with our Church and the fulfillment of the Church’s mission. We formed in 2002 in Boston, Massachusetts to respond to the clergy sexual abuse crisis that developed here in the United States. We began as a group of concerned Catholics who met in a church basement, and quickly grew to include members in all fifty U.S. states and in over 30 countries. As stated in our mission statement, we seek “to provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit, through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Catholic Church.” We have taken great inspiration from the documents of the Vatican II Council. We know that you were an active participant in that Council that brought such hope to many lay Catholics around the world. We are Catholics committed to our faith. Many of us are lectors, Eucharistic ministers, and pastoral council members in our parishes who want a sense of “shared responsibility” between the hierarchy and lay Catholics to be promoted. We are extremely concerned about the culture of secrecy within the Church that precludes fostering that kind of shared responsibility. We hope that we can work with you, and with all the Bishops, to make accountability for Bishops, clergy, and for lay Catholics, a part of the fabric of the Catholic Church. In the past several years, we have learned that while Boston is considered the epicenter of the crisis in the Church, this region is by no means alone in dealing with the harm of clergy sexual abuse and its root causes. Unfortunately, we know that this is a problem that the universal Church faces, and can only be solved in and by the whole Church – hierarchy, clergy, and laity – working together to address it. The recent decision you made to re-open the investigation of Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ who has been accused of sexually abusing nine young men, gives us encouragement that you understand the depths of devastation this abuse has brought on the Church. To build on this small but significant step, we urge you to meet with an international delegation of survivors as soon as possible, as we called on the Pope to do in 2004. We pray and hope that your tenure as Pope will deepen the flowering of spirituality established by Pope John Paul II. The lay Catholics who make up Voice of the Faithful very much want the Church in the 21st century to address the issues confronting our world that the Church has been so effective in addressing throughout its history – promoting an end to global poverty and hunger and advancing the cause of peace in the world. You are in our prayers, as is the entire Church. We look forward to creating a vibrant Church that advances the message of Christ’s love for humanity. Sincerely, Voice of the Faithful
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