Pope says church persecution comes from 'sin within'

In his strongest comments to date on the clerical sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict XVI has said that the “greatest persecution” of the Catholic Church comes from “sin within”.The head of the Catholic Church made the comments as he began a four-day trip to Portugal on Tuesday.

Reuters

"Today the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from outside, but from the sin inside the Church itself," the pontiff told journalists aboard his plane for Lisbon.

The 83-year-old said the Church had a "profound need" to "learn forgiveness and also the necessity of justice," underlining that "forgiveness does not replace justice."

The Pope later arrived in Portugal, where he will hold open-air masses in Lisbon and Porto.

He also plans to visit the Catholic shrine of Fatima, where three children reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917. His trip to the sanctuary comes exactly 10 years after his predecessor John Paul II beatified two of the children at the site.