By Bridget Johnson, your guide to Journalism

More than 45,000 people packed Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, a capacity crowd eager to hear Pope Benedict XVI say Mass. And for a career theologian who last led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and had to follow in the footsteps of the beloved John Paul II, Benedict’s American visit seems to have put to rest any lingering stereotypes of a cold doctrinaire.

In a trip marked by messages of interfaith outreach and reminders of America’s greatness and responsibilities, Benedict took the initiative to put the issue of church sex abuse at the forefront of his visit and meet privately with some victims:

“The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman, said that Benedict and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley met with a group of five or six abuse victims for about 25 minutes, offering them encouragement and hope. The group from O’Malley’s archdiocese were all adults, men and women, who had been molested when they were minors. Each spoke privately with the pope and the whole group prayed together.


One of the victims, Bernie McDaid, told The Associated Press that he shook the pope’s hand, told him he was an altar boy and had been abused by a priest in the sacristy of his parish. The abuse, he told Benedict, was not only sexual but spiritual.


‘I said, “Holy Father, you need to know you have a cancer in your flock and I hope you will do something for this problem; you have to fix this,”‘ McDaid said. ‘He looked down at the floor and back at me, like, “I know what you mean.” He took it in emotionally. We looked eye to eye.’


…Expected to address the problem only once during his six-day trip — at a Mass with priests in New York City on Saturday — Benedict has instead returned to the issue repeatedly, beginning in a news conference on the flight from Rome to the U.S.


He has called the crisis a cause of ‘deep shame,’ pledged to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood and decried the ‘enormous pain’ that communities have suffered from such ‘gravely immoral behavior’ by priests.


On Wednesday, he told bishops the problem has sometimes been very ‘badly handled’ and said it was their God-given duty to heal the wounds caused by abuse. He asked each parishioner at Mass on Thursday ‘to do what you can to foster healing and reconciliation, and to assist those who have been hurt.’


But Thursday afternoon’s session went a step further. Lombardi said it was believed to be the first-ever such session between a pope and abuse victims.”

The Washington Post captured the scene in D.C. well, with crowds intent on getting a glimpse of or a hand touch from the pope. The WaPo also studies Benedict’s preference for more vintage vestments, musing about whether this means he wants to go theologically back in time, as well. (Benedict was at the Second Vatican Council from 1962-65, which modernized the Catholic Church as it is today.)

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)