Pope talks to public in rare TV broadcast
ITALY: Pope Benedict took questions from a child in Japan, a Muslim
woman in Ivory Coast and a mother caring for a son in a permanent coma
in his first televised dialogue with the public, broadcast on Good
Friday.
The German-born pontiff, like his Polish predecessor John Paul, has
allowed rare televised interviews with journalists but his contact with
the public marked a new step for the leader of the world's 1.2 billion
Catholics.
The interaction was shown on Italian television in mid afternoon at
around the time Christ is believed to have died. Later the pope attended
the traditional Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession to commemorate
Christ's crucifixion and death.
Though heavily controlled by Vatican officials, the television
broadcast, called "In His Image", represented an attempt to freshen the
image of the Church by the pope, who has lamented the decline of
Christian faith in the Western world.
Following roughly the format of an Italian TV chat show, with a
moderator and a panel of experts before a studio audience, it included
pre-recorded responses from the 84-year old pope speaking via video
link.
Sitting at his desk, the pope told the mother of a man who has been
in a coma for a long time that her son's soul was still in his body and
that he could feel the presence of love.
"The situation, perhaps, is like that of a guitar whose strings have
been broken and therefore can no longer play," the pope told the Italian
mother, who spoke beside her son.
To a seven year-old girl in Japan asking him to explain the suffering
in her country after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami which killed
28,000 people, he pointed to Jesus and said suffering was not in vain.
"We do not have the answers but we know that Jesus suffered as you
do," the pope said.
Responding to a request for advice from a Muslim woman in Ivory
Coast, which is emerging from a conflict in which at least 1,500 people
died and a million were forced to flee, the pope said people should look
to Christ as an example of peace.
"Violence never comes from God, never helps bring anything good, but
is a destructive means and not the path to escape difficulties," he
said.
He also told youth in Iraq that the Church was encouraging dialogue
between religions.
Rome, Sunday, Reuters
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