This is how the Washington Post begins today on Pope Benedict and the scandals:

Bernie McDaid says he is changed, not healed.
After praying privately with Pope Benedict XVI, after telling the pontiff that there is “a cancer” in the Roman Catholic Church, after giving the 81-year-old German theologian a loaf of Irish soda bread baked by McDaid’s 81-year-old mother, he now thinks the Church will more aggressively fight sexual abuse by priests.
“When the pope apologized and clearly said he was sorry for the pain this has caused, it marked a changing point in this whole process, and it emotionally did something for me,” McDaid said yesterday, a day after he and four other clergy sex abuse victims from the Boston area met with Benedict at the Vatican Embassy in Northwest Washington.
“I believe it’s the beginning, and not just for me,” McDaid, 52, of Peabody, Mass., said shortly before flying home. “Things are really going to happen now.”
Olan Horne, a Lowell, Mass., abuse victim who participated in the meeting, was similarly affected. “For the first time, the pontiff put the responsibility of the Church and the suffering and the needs of the survivors first,” said Horne, 48, who added that the pope was in tears when they met.
Even more than the pope’s repeated references to the sex abuse scandal during his visit to Washington this week, his meeting with McDaid, Horne and the others packed a wallop, according to bishops, lay Catholic groups and sex abuse victims. It could be a turning point for an American church whose leaders, many say, have moved haltingly to institute reforms from the scandal.
“When the pope gives this much attention to it . . . that communicates to the bishops that ‘you’d better get on this and make this a priority, and I’m going to pay attention,’ ” said Robert Bennett, a D.C. lawyer who served on a lay panel created by U.S. bishops to monitor reform efforts. He met with Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 2004 to discuss the scandal.