Pope Benedict XVI has opened Holy Week indicating that he would “not be intimidated” by accusations against the Vatican over the clerical sex abuse crisis.

In his Palm Sunday address the Pope said that Jesus Christ “leads us towards courage which does not allow us to be intimidated by the chatter of dominant opinions, towards patience which supports and sustains others”.

The pontiff did not refer to accusations over his handling of cases of paedophile priests, both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and subsequently as head of doctrine at the Vatican. However, Vatican watchers said his meaning today was clear “in the current context”.

One Palm Sunday prayer, recited in Portuguese during the Mass, referred to “the young and for those charged with educating them and protecting them.”

Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and is the start of the Church’s Holy Week, which includes Good Friday, the sombre day of Christ’s Crucifixion, and Easter Sunday, which marks Jesus’ resurrection.

It has been overshadowed by the clerical abuse scandal which has spread across Europe to the Pope’s native Germany. On Good Friday 2005, shortly before the death of John Paul II and Pope Benedict’s election as his successor, the future Pope – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – condemned the “filth” in the Church, a reference to paedophilia scandals.

Vatican officials maintain he has since been active in combating clerical sex abuse, especially during his visit to the United States in 2008, when he met a number of victims. In his recent pastoral letter to Irish bishops he called sex abuse a “grave sin” and a “heinous crime”.

However the Vatican is on the defensive and bracing for further revelations. It has already emerged that as Cardinal Ratzinger, the Pope allowed Father Peter Hullermann, a known paedophile priest, to receive “therapy” in his Munich diocese in 1980. Father Hullermann was later allowed to resume pastoral work with children, and in 1986 was convicted of abusing minors.

In addition a case has come to light in which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told Wisconsin bishops to halt a church trial for Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest alleged to have abused up to 200 deaf boys, at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger was head of the Congregation.

The Vatican insists Ratzinger was unaware of Father Hullermann’s return to pastoral work and has also defended his handling of the Wisconsin case, saying Father Murphy was in ill health and the accusations against him dated back decades. He died not long after the Church trial against him was dropped.

In his homily today the Pope addressed himself to young people, reminding them that “Christian life is a path, or pilgrimage with Christ, a walk in the direction that he has chosen and shows us.”

On Saturday, the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, acknowledged that the way the Church responds to the abuse scandal will be “crucial for its moral credibility.” He noted that most of the cases that have come to light recently occurred decades ago, adding “But recognising them, and making amends to the victims, is the price of re-establishing justice and purifying memories that will let us look ahead with renewed commitment together, with humility and trust in the future”.

Monsignor Robert Zollitsch, head of the German bishops’ conference, has said the Vatican is compiling information from around the world with the aim of setting out new guidelines on abuse.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, former archbishop of Milan and at one time a contender for the papacy, today Sunday told an Austrian paper that priestly celibacy should be “reviewed” as a possible cause of abuse by clergy. The Vatican has rejected suggestions that celibacy causes abuse, and Pope Benedict this month reaffirmed it as “a gift to God”.

source :timesonline

Elsewhere, Egyptian police said they arrested 45 suspected smugglers over the past three days in an intensified crackdown on the hundreds of cross-border tunnels that provide a supply line to Gaza. Among the suspects was a man accused of trying to deliver $242,000 in Egyptian pounds and U.S. dollars to Hamas in Gaza, police said.

Israel and Egypt sealed their borders with Gaza in 2007 after Hamas militants overran the coastal territory. Since then, Gaza has depended heavily on smuggled cash and goods.

Egypt is building an underground barrier along its border with Gaza to try to cut off the smuggling.

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Associated Press writer Ashraf Sweilam contributed to this report from Rafah, Egypt.

The Associated Press.

Israel withdrew its troops from the Gaza Strip Saturday after some of the fiercest gunbattles with Palestinian militants in the Hamas-run territory since last year’s military offensive.

Israeli troops used bulldozers to “remove infrastructure used by terrorists to attack soldiers” before the early morning withdrawal, a military spokeswoman said.

Gaza militants, meanwhile, fired a rocket into southern Israel on Saturday, but no injuries were reported, the military said. Two others fell short of Israeli territory.

The violence began Friday when soldiers patrolling the border crossed into Gaza after spotting Palestinians planting explosives near the fence with Israel.

Two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian militants were killed in the gunbattle, the military said. Palestinian medics said one civilian was killed and seven were wounded in the fighting. Militants reported one wounded and one missing.

Israel’s military held Gaza’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers responsible for the violence.

“We will not tolerate any attempt to harm the citizens of the state of Israel and we will continue to operate firmly against anyone who uses terror against it,” a military statement said.

The violence underscored some of the challenges the U.S. faces as it tries to get Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track.

Senior Israeli Cabinet ministers plan to meet Sunday to draw up a response to President Barack Obama’s demand for peace gestures toward the Palestinians, Israel’s Channel 10 TV reported. A government spokesman could not immediately confirm or deny the report.

The ministers began discussing the matter on Friday.

Washington has demanded the gestures to try to jump-start U.S.-brokered peace talks, which were derailed by Israeli plans to continue building in contested east Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to keep the entire holy city as Israel’s capital, while the Palestinians claim the eastern sector as

A rebel group thought to be spent has butchered 321 people – and exposed an international failure

LRA fighters arrive at an assembly point in Sudan in 2006 as part of a truce. Photograph: JAMES AKENA/REUTERS

Fighters from Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army have hacked or beaten to death at least 321 Congolese villagers in one of the worst single atrocities of their 23-year insurgency.

The attacks occurred in a remote part of northern Democratic Republic of Congo between 14 and 17 December last year, but their scale has only now been made public. Human Rights Watch, which today releases a report on the mass killings, says that most of the dead were men who had been tied up and then cut with machetes, or had their skulls crushed with axes or clubs. Family members later found many of the battered bodies still bound to trees.

More than 250 civilians, including 80 children, were seized during the raid that left a “stench of death” in the Makombo area of Haut Uele district, the report said. The attacks were allegedly ordered by General Dominic Ongwen, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court. United Nations human rights officials in Congo, who this month reached part of the heavily forested area where the attacks occurred, corroborated the account. They recorded the names of 100 victims and 150 abductees. But Todd Howland, director of the UN’s joint human rights office in Congo, said the Red Cross had reported burying 250 people and the death toll was likely to be higher. “A figure of 321 does not sound exaggerated,” he said. “It could be more than that.”

The massacre is a reminder of the threat posed by the LRA rebels, who became notorious for kidnapping children and their brutal killing methods during the 18 years they terrorised Uganda before moving to Congo. It also highlights the chronic failure of governments in the region and the international community to protect civilians.

LRA rebels have killed 1,600 Congolese civilians and abducted more than 2,500 since September 2008, after peace talks broke down. Yet the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as Monuc, has only established three bases in Haut Uele and Bas Uele – an area the size of Belgium – with about 1,000 troops. Congo has tried to play down the LRA presence, as has the Ugandan military.

The Human Rights Watch report, A Trail of Death: Ongoing LRA Atrocities in Northern Congo, said the rebels used similar tactics in each village on their 65-mile journey. Pretending to be soldiers, they told villagers not to be afraid. Once people had gathered, they were seized.

“LRA combatants specifically searched out areas where people might gather – such as markets, churches and water points – and repeatedly asked those they encountered about the location of schools, indicating that one of their objectives was to abduct children,” the report said. “Those who were abducted, including many children aged 10 to 15 years old, were tied with ropes or metal wire at the waist, often in human chains of five to 15 people. They were made to carry the goods the LRA had pillaged and then forced to march off with them. Anyone who refused, or walked too slowly, or who tried to escape, was killed. Children were not spared.”

According to the report, Congolese and Ugandan soldiers – who have been pursuing the LRA since 2008 – arrived in the area on 18 December. The Congolese army sent in an investigation team on 26 December, which concluded that a large massacre had occurred but did not make the knowledge public.

The Ugandan military spokesman in Kampala, Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Kulayigye, denied that any significant attack had occurred at Makombo. He said that Operation Lightning Thunder – a US-backed Ugandan mission to destroy LRA bases in a Congolese national park in December 2008 – and follow-up operations had left the rebels with fewer than 200 fighters. “We do not believe that the LRA has the numbers or the time to kill 300 people in Congo.”

But the UN joint human rights office in Kinshasa disagreed. Todd Howland said that the scale of the abductions since 2008 meant the LRA remained a serious threat. He said his office heard of the Makombo attack in January and asked Monuc to provide access to the area. But insecurity in the zone and difficult terrain meant investigators had to wait until 10 March to reach the site.

“You can question whether the Congolese government’s reaction is adequate. But you can also question whether the UN member states have met their obligations under the international responsibility to protect.”