Oh, Joy. Waiting With Bated Breath . . . .

Get out the popcorn.

Reserve your seats.

Per Reuters today, Bennie's heading our way.

Pope aims to heal sex abuse wounds on U.S. trip
Wed Apr 9, 2008 9:27am EDT

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict will seek to heal wounds from a sexual abuse scandal that shook the Catholic Church in the United States, during his first trip there as pontiff next week, the Vatican's number two said.

"The pope will talk about it -- talk about it in a specific way," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, told Fox News in an interview to be broadcast on Wednesday.

"The pope, along with the Church's priests, will naturally seek the path toward healing and toward reconciliation."

The sexual abuse scandal started in Boston in 2002, when Catholic leaders were discovered to have moved priests who abused minors to new parishes instead of defrocking or reporting them to police.

The scandal later spread to almost every U.S. Catholic diocese.

Last July the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating back as far as the 1940s.

The German-born pope, who visits Washington, New York and will address the United Nations during the April 15-20 trip, will raise the sexual abuse of minors in an address at St. Patrick's Cathedral on April 17, Bertone said.

Whoopee.

Hope his fashion sense has improved . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)