“Pope breaks silence on sex abuse scandal” reported major media yesterday, despite the fact that he wrote a lengthy and public letter on the subject to Irish Catholics less than a month ago. The reference was to remarks made on Thursday during Mass at the Vatican.

Catholic News Service reports:

"I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'penance,' which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace," the pope said April 15 in a homily during a Mass with members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

"We see how it is necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is mistaken in our life," he said during the morning Mass in the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace.

Audio clips and a transcript of part the pope's homily, delivered without a prepared text, were posted on the Vatican Radio Web site.

The pope said Christians know that "to open oneself to forgiveness, to prepare oneself for forgiveness, to allow oneself to be transformed, the pain of penance -- that is to say of purification and of transformation -- this pain is grace, because it is renewal, and it is the work of divine mercy."

And also:

The pope said Christians know that "to open oneself to forgiveness, to prepare oneself for forgiveness, to allow oneself to be transformed, the pain of penance -- that is to say of purification and of transformation -- this pain is grace, because it is renewal, and it is the work of divine mercy."

Pope Benedict also spoke about freedom, conformism and doing the will of God:

In his homily, the pope also spoke about the liberating effect of obeying God, even in a world that likes to pretend that freedom means doing whatever the individual wants to do, but still insists on everyone conforming to what the majority believes and does.

He seems to have been suggesting that Christians have caved in to pressure to stop talking -- or thinking -- about God’s will, the final judgement and eternal life, and that this is the ultimate cause of scandals like the present one.