Pope to confess Catholic church’s past horrors

In three other categories, the church will confess to sins "against love, peace, the rights of peoples, respect of cultures and other religions affected by evangelisation," to sins "against women, races, ethnic groups," and also to sins involving "fundamental individual rights, the poor, the abandoned and unborn children".

During the ceremony, a crucifix from the San Marcello al Corso church, dating from the the 14th century, will be on display in Saint Peter’s. Traditionally, the crucifix is venerated in the basilica during holy years. "This is meant to emphasise that only God can forgive sins,’ Marini said. The Vatican’s theologians have justified this general repentance in a document entitled "Memory and Reconciliation" which points out that "all forms of repentance for past sins must first be addressed to God."

At the ceremony, amid invocations for pardon for sinners, the "mea culpa" of the millennium will start with the pope and his cardinals standing before the pieta statue of Michelangelo, followed by a penitential procession towards an altar topped by seven candelabras and a copy of the Bible’s new testament.

The pope will make a speech, described as "important," followed by prayers and chants as lights are lit around the crucifix. On Sunday, John-Paul II, 79, who has already sought forgiveness more than 100 times in penance for the acts of the church, intends to make a solemn and media occasion of repentance to mark the millennium.

He says that the church cannot enter the new millennium without urging its sons to purify themselves in repentance of errors, infidelity, incoherence and procrastination. During a long speech on September 1, 1999, to a crowd of 10,000 in Saint Peter’s Square, the pope spoke of historical splits in the church and the inquisition. One of the confessions the most difficult to make was the responsibility of Catholics regarding anti-Semitism and the Nazi holocaust.

It was only on March 16, 1997, that the Vatican honoured a 1987 pledge to the Jews by publishing a document on the Shoah. It is still condemned as insufficient by the Italian Jewish community, whose President, Amos Luzzato, said on Wednesday that the confession contained "nothing new."