POPE Benedict XVI said today he could understand why people were turning their back on the Catholic Church after the recent sex abuse scandals, as he arrived for his first state visit to Germany.

At the start of a four-day trip to his homeland, the pontiff also took a conciliatory tone with protesters who planned to rally in the free-wheeling, overwhelmingly Protestant or secular German capital as long as they were “civil”.

“I can understand that in the face of such reports, people, especially those close to victims, would say ‘this isn’t my Church anymore’,” the 84-year-old told reporters on his plane from Rome.

Enduring outrage over widespread molestation of children by Catholic clergy over several decades has threatened to cloud the pope’s visit, where his election six years ago met with an outpouring of joy.

Organisers say at least 20,000 demonstrators, including gays, feminists, atheists, abuse survivors and other papal opponents, will gather in Berlin.

“Our alliance is not protesting against faith but rather calls on Catholics to demonstrate against the Church’s stances,” said Pascal Ferror, coordinator of a collective called “The Pope Is Coming”.

Benedict said that such protests were “normal in a free society marked by strong secularism”.

“One can’t object” to such protests, he added. “I respect those who speak out.”

The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics has a gruelling schedule while in Germany, combining official talks in Berlin with outreach to the faithful, many of whom have grown alienated during his six-year-old papacy.

The pontiff will hold his first-ever speech before a national parliament in the afternoon before addressing a capacity crowd of 70,000 at the historic Olympic Stadium.

He will also visit Erfurt in former communist East Germany and predominantly Catholic Freiburg in the southwest, addressing an estimated total of 260,000 people in his mother tongue before departing on Sunday.

But as if to underline the ambivalence in his native country, dozens of leftist deputies vowed to boycott the pontiff’s speech to parliament, while throngs of demonstrators rally a few blocks away behind police barricades.

“It will do the pope good to come to Berlin and sense what reality is in the year 2011,” said the co-leader of the opposition Greens, Claudia Roth, amid accusations the address will undermine the separation of Church and state.

Critics say Ratzinger, known as “God’s Rottweiler” while head of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is out of touch with modern life with his rigorous dogma on artificial contraception, homosexuality and the role of women in the Church.

Security units were enforcing a lockdown near the Bundestag parliament building, as well as in the largely Muslim neighbourhood around the apostolic nunciature, the Vatican embassy, where he will spend the night.

Catholic leaders hope to avert the disruption seen last month in Spain during World Youth Day celebrations, when thousands marched against the pope, sparking a police crackdown, or during a 1996 trip when John Paul II in his popemobile encountered paint bombs and a female streaker in Berlin.

Benedict’s papacy has been marred by revelations last year of rampant abuse by German priests over several decades, which helped drive more than 181,000 from the Church – 57,000 more than in 2009.

The pope said today that there were various factors at play.

“There are many reasons for people leaving the Church in the context of a secular society. Leaving the Church is generally the final step along a long path of distancing oneself from the Church,” he told journalists.

The Vatican has indicated it is likely the pontiff will meet with sexual abuse victims, as he did on trips to Britain and Malta.

Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Germans are largely indifferent to “their” pope’s arrival.

Germany’s Christians are split down the middle between Catholics and Lutherans, each with about one-third of the population in the country that was the cradle of the Reformation.

The pope will give 18 sermons and speeches during his 21st trip abroad, his third to Germany following World Youth Day in Cologne in 2005 and a private visit to his native Bavaria in 2006.

AN international group representing victims of sexual abuse by priests says it will sue Pope Benedict through the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said on Wednesday it had filed a complaint calling on the court to “take action and prosecute the Pope” for “direct and superior responsibility for the crimes against humanity of rape and other sexual violence committed around the world”.

In a statement, the network said members from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US had travelled to The Hague with human rights lawyers to urge prosecutors to investigate the Pope and three other high-ranking Vatican officials.

The US-based group also submitted more than 20,000 pages of supporting materials including “reports, policy papers, and evidence of the crimes by Catholic clergy committed against children and vulnerable adults”. it said.

The Catholic Church is struggling to deal with rising anger and a string of lawsuits following thousands of child abuse claims in Europe and the US.

THE Vatican today acknowledged “grave failures” over the handling of a child sex abuse scandal involving priests in southern Ireland that sparked outrage in the Dublin government.

While denying any suggestion that it sought to hamper investigations into the scandal in the diocese of Cloyne, the Vatican expressed deep concern at the findings of an official report commissioned by the Irish government.

“The Holy See is deeply concerned at the findings of the commission of inquiry concerning grave failures in the ecclesiastical governance of the diocese of Cloyne,” said a Vatican statement.

The Vatican also “wishes to state its abhorrence for the crimes of sexual abuse which took place in that diocese”, the statement added.

July’s publication of the report into more than a decade of abuse by priests in Cloyne triggered an unprecedented attack by Prime Minister Enda Kenny who called the Roman Catholic Church’s behaviour “absolutely disgraceful”.

While Pope Benedict XVI last year wrote a letter to Irish Catholics expressing shame and remorse over the abuse of children by members of the clergy, campaigners say the Church has been guilty of a cover-up.

In the statement today, the Vatican denied that it had tried to block inquiries by the Irish authorities.

“The Holy See wishes to make it quite clear that it in no way hampered or sought to interfere in any inquiry into child sexual abuse in the diocese of Cloyne,” it said.

The Cloyne report condemned the Church’s handling of abuse claims against 19 clerics in Cloyne between 1996 and 2009, saying it was “inadequate and inappropriate”.

In language never before used by an Irish leader, an outraged Prime Minister Kenny later told parliament the Church’s inability to deal with the cases showed a culture of “dysfunction, disconnection, elitism and narcissism” at the Vatican.

The Vatican subsequently recalled its envoy to Ireland in order to formulate an official response.

The Cloyne case is only the latest in a series of abuse scandals for the Catholic Church in Ireland that were first exposed in a 2009 report detailing hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of children by priests going back decades.

JAKARTA, Indonesia—A mayor is trying to ban Christian churches on streets with Islamic names, the latest attempt to block construction of a new parish in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.

Critics say the proposal—however arbitrary—is another example of growing religious intolerance.

The Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church was supposed to open in the city of Bogor in 2008, but residents protested, claiming its permit was illegal.

Though the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the church in December, Mayor Diani Budiarto refused to comply.

He argued he was pushing for a decree to make it illegal to open churches on streets with Islamic names.

Indonesia, a secular nation of 240 million, has a long history of religious tolerance, but a small extremist fringe has become more vocal—and violent—in recent years.

Critics said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono—who relies heavily on Islamic parties in parliament—has remained silent as minorities have been attacked by hard-liners or seen their houses of worship torched or boarded up.

Christians, who make up 10 percent of the population, also say it can take years to get permits to build new churches.

The Taman Yasmin worshippers have been holding weekly services in front of their sealed off building for nearly three years, said Bona Singalingging, the church spokesman.

He called the mayor’s latest proposal part of a “dangerous” trend.

The Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, a human rights group, says attacks on religious freedom by hard-liners more than tripled in the last two years.

In 2010, there were 64 incidents, ranging from physical abuse to preventing groups from performing prayers and burning houses of worship, up from 18 in 2009 and 17 in 2008.

VATICAN CITY—Pope Benedict XVI is “deeply saddened” by the ordination of a bishop in China without his approval, the Vatican said Monday, attacking the latest unilateral act by China’s state-controlled Catholic church in its standoff with Rome.

The toughly worded communique said the ordination of the Rev. Paul Lei Shiyin in the diocese of Leshan on June 29 is considered illegitimate, sows divisions and “unfortunately produces rifts and tensions” in the Catholic community.

China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951. Worship is allowed only in state-backed churches, although millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to the pope.

An agreement under which the Vatican was given an opportunity to give its tacit approval on new bishops broke down last year.

Pope Benedict has made improving relations with China a priority of his foreign policy, but a key stumbling block has been the Vatican’s insistence on the pope’s right to appoint bishops, as he does elsewhere in the world. Beijing’s communist rulers see it as interference by a foreign entity in Chinese affairs.

Beijing also objects to the Vatican’s diplomatic ties with Taiwan, although the Holy See has indicated it is willing to move its embassy to the mainland should formal ties be restored.

The Vatican said Monday that “an episcopal ordination without papal mandate is directly opposed to the spiritual role of the supreme pontiff and damages the unity of the church.”

“If it is desired that the church in China be Catholic, the church’s doctrine and discipline must be respected,” it added.

Shiyin, who risks automatic excommunication, had been informed for some time that he was unacceptable to the Holy See as a bishop “for proven and very grave reasons,” it said.

The Vatican did list the reasons, but they are presumably linked to his role as vice chairman of the Patriotic Association, the official name of the state-backed Catholic church.

POPE Benedict XVI wrote a message on Twitter overnight praising Jesus and announcing the launch of a new Vatican website in the first “tweet” by a leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

“Dear Friends, I just launched www.news.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI,” wrote the Pope, using his formal name in Latin – the Vatican’s official language.

The Vatican has embraced social media in recent months, launching popular Facebook and YouTube pages and courting bloggers as it tries to get the church’s message out to a wider and more youthful audience.

The church also used a website to receive notifications of purported miracles attributed to late Pope John Paul II and is launching an e-learning initiative to address the problem of child abuse by priests.

The news.va web portal is set to be formally launched tomorrow.

It will provide news and pictures from the Vatican’s radio and television stations and its official newspaper, Osservatore Romano.

The portal will initially be in English and Italian with plans to include a third language, probably Spanish, after the summer.

BEIJING—An advocacy group and local official say Chinese police have detained 49 leaders of the underground Protestant church in a central province.

The U.S.-based China Aid Association says all three floors of a church building were searched and property seized during Tuesday’s raid on a religious education seminar.

An official with the Weishi county religious affairs bureau in Henan province where the raid took place confirmed Wednesday the detentions but gave no details. Like many Chinese officials, he gave only his surname, Sun.

China requires all religious groups to accept Communist Party oversight. This month, a U.S. commission listed China as one of the worst violators of religious freedoms. Beijing hostly denies the charge.

The Vatican yesterday said it had “nothing to hide” after it emerged that Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, widely condemned over human rights abuses, would be among the dignitaries attending Sunday’s beatification of Pope John Paul II.

The coffin containing the remains of the late pontiff was removed from the crypts underneath St Peter’s yesterday in the run-up to the beatification. In a simple ceremony, the white marble tomb where the coffin has reposed since his funeral in April 2005 was opened in the presence of his former close associates, including his long-time Polish secretary, now Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, and the nuns who ran his household. The coffin will be placed in front of the main altar in the basilica, where it will remain on display, the Vatican announced, until everyone who wants to view it has done so.

It was revealed amid some embarrassment that the dignitaries expected to file past the casket on Sunday morning will include Mr Mugabe. His presence, explained a Vatican spokesman, was a “function” of the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Zimbabwe, “so there is nothing to hide”.

Mr Mugabe is the subject of an EU-wide travel ban and the Vatican had to obtain special permission for him to be allowed to enter the pocket statelet. It will be at least the third time that Mr Mugabe has taken advantage of the Vatican’s and/or Italy’s diplomatic largesse since John Paul’s death.

He was present at the pope’s funeral, where he contrived to shake the hand of Prince Charles and again at the World Food Summit in 2008. Zimbabwe’s is one of 87 foreign delegations attending the beatification, which will place the only Polish pope in history one step away from sainthood.

Britain’s royal family will be represented by the Duke of Gloucester. There was intense speculation about whether Tony Blair would attend, but as of last night there was no confirmation.

Up to a million Poles are expected to arrive in Rome by Sunday morning, adding their considerable weight to a temporary doubling of the city’s population. Rome is already festooned with portraits of the most media-friendly pope in history and newsstands groan under the weight of souvenir books and knick-knacks.

The former pontiff’s remains will be reinterred in St Peter’s, close to Michelangelo’s sculpture of Mary holding Christ’s lifeless body, La Pieta. A notably belligerent 17th century pope, Innocent XI, will be displaced to make room for him.