Vatican to publish child-abuse letter to Irish

The letter will be available to journalists in English and Italian from noon (1100 GMT) on Saturday, said the Vatican press office.

VATICAN CITY, March 18, 2010 (AFP) - The Vatican said Thursday it would publish this weekend Pope Benedict XVI's pastoral letter to Ireland's Roman Catholics about the paedophile priest scandal that has rocked their country.

The letter will be available to journalists in English and Italian from noon (1100 GMT) on Saturday, said the Vatican press office in a statement a day after the pope said he would sign the long-awaited letter on Friday.

"In recent months, the Church in Ireland has been severely shaken as a result of the child abuse crisis," the 82-year-old pontiff acknowledged on Wednesday during a weekly general audience at the Vatican, speaking in English to Irish pilgrims attending the audience on Saint Patrick's Day.

Revelations of widespread child abuse by members of the clergy, compounded by evidence of a cover-up by the church hierarchy, rocked the Irish Catholic Church late last year.

Since then, new abuse scandals involving the church have emerged in Austria, the pope's native Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Irish Catholics have been anticipating Benedict's pastoral letter since it was mooted in December, when the pope met with primate of all Ireland Cardinal Sean Brady and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

Brady, facing calls to resign, apologised on Wednesday. He had notably attended meetings in 1975 at which children allegedly abused by one of Ireland's worst serial paedophiles were asked to take a vow of secrecy.

"I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologise to you with all my heart," Brady said.

Pope Benedict called a second meeting over the scandal last month, summoning Brady, Martin and 22 other bishops to the Vatican and urging them to restore the Church's "spiritual and moral credibility."

On Wednesday, the pope said of the upcoming pastoral letter: "I ask all of you to read it for yourselves, with an open heart and in a spirit of faith. My hope is that it will help in the process of repentance, healing and renewal."