VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Sex scandals that have rocked the United States and Pope John Paul's native Poland cast a shadow on the pontiff's Holy Thursday events at the Vatican.
For the second time in five days, a weak-looking Pope attended but did not celebrate a major Holy Week mass.
However, he did read the sermon from his throne, and made an indirect reference to the sex scandals that have shocked the Roman Catholic church.
"We pray for those priestly brothers of ours who have not lived up to the commitments they made when they were ordained or who are going through a period of difficulty and crisis," he said.
Shortly after the Holy Thursday mass ended, the Vatican announced that John Paul had accepted the resignation of Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, 67, the head of the diocese of Poznan in western Poland who once worked with the Pope at the Vatican.
Paetz is accused of molesting trainee priests and young clerics and the scandal has touched off the noisiest storm yet over the behavior of churchmen in Poland, where the Catholic hierarchy still has enormous influence.
He was believed to be the highest ranking Catholic churchman to resign over a sex scandal since Austria's Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer was forced into retirement in 1995 after charges of molesting former students.
Holy Thursday commemorates the day Christ instituted the priesthood at the Last Supper with his Apostles and so the reference to priests who had failed to live up to their vows and the timing of Paetz's resignation was significant.
Paetz, who has denied sexual misconduct, was accused by fellow priests of paying night visits to the lodgings of seminarians, cuddling up to young clerics in public and using an underground tunnel to pay unannounced visits to his targets.
Last week the Pope broke his silence on a wave of child sex scandals involving Catholic clerics in the United States, issuing a letter in which he said that priests who abused minors were committing the worst possible form of evil.
EYE ON HEALTH
The Pope, who has been troubled by what the Vatican says is an arthritic knee, sat out most of the service. He read some of the prayers but the mass was celebrated by a cardinal.
If he had celebrated all of the mass himself, the Pope would have had to walk or stand for some two hours.
Last Sunday was the first time since his 1978 election that ill-health had forced John Paul to delegate someone to celebrate a major Easter season celebration for him, although he has done it with minor services in the past in order to rest.
Vatican officials said they would decide on a case-by-case basis between Thursday and Easter Sunday at which ceremonies the Pope would be the main celebrant. He will attend all of them.
He was presiding at another service on Thursday afternoon.
Although the knee complaint is minor compared with past ailments, it has once again put the spotlight on the health of the man who leads the world's more than one billion Catholics.
The Pope's health has been failing more or less steadily since the early 1990s, when symptoms of Parkinson's disease first appeared. His left hand now trembles uncontrollably.
He had a colon tumor removed in 1992, dislocated his shoulder in 1993, broke his femur in 1994, and had his appendix removed in 1996.
Doctors fear the Pope, who already has problems walking on his right leg because of the 1994 bone replacement surgery, may have ever more difficulty moving by himself