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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

World in brief: Cardinal says pope will seek healing


Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said Pope Benedict XVI can't meet all the invitations from U.S. cities during his trip and will visit Washington and New York. Associated Press
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
The Spokesman-Review

Pope Benedict XVI recognizes the damage and pain caused by the clergy sex abuse crisis and will seek to heal wounds during his U.S. trip next week, the Vatican’s No. 2 official said Tuesday.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in an interview with the Associated Press, said Benedict will deliver a message of “trust and hope” when he meets American clergy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

Benedict “will try to open the path of healing and reconciliation,” said Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state.

The abuse crisis has caused “so much suffering for the victims, for the families of the victims and above all to the church because it was a contradiction with the great educational mission of the church,” Bertone lamented during the 30-minute interview in the frescoed Treaty Hall of the Apostolic Palace.

Bogota, Colombia

France scratches hostage aid mission

France called off a humanitarian mission Tuesday to treat and possibly free ailing hostage Ingrid Betancourt after Colombian rebels said they wouldn’t unilaterally release any more captives.

France’s Foreign Ministry said late Tuesday that there was no longer any reason to keep the mission by France, Spain and Switzerland in Colombia. A French government plane has been waiting on a Bogota airstrip for days with doctors hoping to reach Betancourt, who was said to be depressed and suffering from hepatitis C.

In a four-paragraph statement released Tuesday, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia repeated what they have insisted on since 2005: that the government demilitarize two counties as the first step toward a broad hostage-prisoner swap. Only as part of such an exchange, they said, would Betancourt go free.

Amman, Jordan

Group: CIA moved suspects to Jordan

A human rights group said Tuesday that the CIA transferred at least 14 terrorism suspects to Jordan for interrogation after Sept. 11.

Human Rights Watch said in a new report that the U.S. ally in the Middle East served as a proxy jailer for the CIA until at least 2004.

It said its 36-page report was based mainly on information from former Jordanian prisoners who had been detained with non-Jordanian terrorism suspects. The group charged that Jordan commonly tortured suspects with extended beatings on the soles of their feet.

But Jordan’s State Minister for Information Nasser Judeh called the findings “baseless and untrue,” the official Petra news agency reported. The CIA declined to comment on the report.