Angry Iran complain to FIFA after women's team banned from playing due to Islamic kit

Ill-fated: The Iran team pose before their scheduled match against Jordan

Iran's dream of competing in the London 2012 Olympic women's football tournament have been crushed by a ruling that their Islamic dress broke FIFA rules.

Iran are complaining to world football's governing body after their women's team were banned from playing, moments before an Olympic qualifier against Jordan last week, due to their full-body strip that includes a head scarf.

The head of women's affairs at Iran's football federation said Iran had made changes to the women's kit after a FIFA ban last year and believed it had been given the approval of the world federation and of president Sepp Blatter.







We made the required corrections and played a match afterwards,' Farideh Shojaei said. 'We played the next round and were not prevented from doing so, and they didn't find anything wrong. That meant that there are no obstacles in our path, and that we could participate in the Olympics.'

FIFA's rules for the 2012 Olympics state that: 'Players and officials shall not display political, religious, commercial or personal messages or slogans in any language or form on their playing or team kits.'

In order to comply with the mandatory dress code in the Islamic Republic, Iran's women footballers play in full tracksuits and headcoverings that conceal their hair.

'(Iran football federation chief Ali) Kafashian took it to FIFA and showed it to Mr Sepp Blatter. And they proved that this conduct conforms to the fourth article of the FIFA constitution, which says (a kit should be) devoid of politics or religion,' Shojaei said.

'In reality, this kit is neither religious, nor political, nor will it lead to harm a player. They proved this, and Mr Sepp Blatter accepted this and we participated in the Olympics.'

Whatever the result of Iran's complaint, it was unlikely that the team, who were awarded a 3-0 defeat in the unplayed qualifier in Amman, would have qualified for 2012, Shojaei said.

'It is extremely difficult to predict what results will come out of this, but I think it unlikely because the preliminary games will not be repeated.

'The countries that invested, and spent money and time and took part in the second round will clearly not be willing to repeat these games, especially if this week it becomes clear which team will enter the final round. So it is extremely unlikely.'

FIFA made no immediate comment on the controversy.

Film board refuses to classify Human Centipede 2 as it could ‘harm viewers’

The UK's movie ratings body has taken the unusual step of refusing outright to classify a new horror film - and warned there was a real risk of harm to viewers.

Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) is the sequel to 2009's stomach-churning German movie about a mad scientist who grafts three kidnap victims together by stitching them mouth to anus.

The sequel - which was shot in London with an all-British cast - deals with a man who becomes 'sexually obsessed' with a DVD recording of the original film and wants to put the idea into practice.

Sick sequel: The British Board of Film Classification has refused to grant a certificate to the follow-up to 2009's The Human Centipede.At the helm: Tom Six, Dutch director of both Human Centipede films, said the original gorefest was like 'My Little Pony compared to part two'. He is seen here in the teaser trailer for the sequel

nstead of examining whether the victims will escape the horrific medical experiment, the new film looks at the sexual fantasies of the torturer and the humiliation and mutilation he inflicts.

An online teaser released to promote the new film called it 'the sickest movie of all time'.

But the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has ruled no amount of cuts would allow them to give the new film a certificate and said it may fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act.

The original Human Centipede (First Sequence) film was given an 18 certificate and was shown in cinemas and film festivals before being released on DVD.

Dutch director, Tom Six, who helmed both films, promised part one would be 'My Little Pony compared to part two' - which is said to feature a 12-person 'human centipede'.

Film distributors had applied to release the follow-up, The Human Centipede 2, on DVD but its rejection means it cannot be legally supplied in the UK.

The BBFC concluded that the thrust of the film was the 'sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture and murder of his naked victims'.

It said: 'There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience.'

The BBFC said the film breached classification guidelines and 'poses a real, as opposed to a fanciful, risk that harm is likely to be caused to potential viewers'.

The first film caused a stir when it was released last year by Six but it was thought to be suitable for adult viewing.

Although set in Germany, it was filmed in the Netherlands.

The cast includes Dieter Laser as the mad scientist Dr Heiter - and his three victims are Ashley Williams (as Lindsay), Ashlynn Yennie (Jenny) and Akihiro Kitamura (Katsuro).

The ratings body said that 'although the concept of the film was undoubtedly tasteless and disgusting, it was a relatively traditional and conventional horror film'.

At the time of the original film's release, celebrated U.S. film critic Roger Ebert said: 'I am required to award stars to movies I review.

'This time, I refuse to do it.

'The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter?

'It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.'

French ban on full veil goes into force

The full-face veil that France is banning , triggering a call for civil disobedience.

France’s ban on full-face veils, a first in Europe, went into force today, exposing anyone who wears the Muslim niqab or burqa in public to fines of €150 (RM653).

A Muslim property dealer, who is urging women to keep wearing the veil if they want to, has urged supporters to go to Notre Dame cathedral in central Paris for a silent prayer during the day, and is also offering to help people pay the fines.

The five million Muslim minority in France is the largest in Western Europe, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full-face veil.

Many Muslim leaders have said they support neither the veil nor the law banning it.




The timing is all the more sensitive after France’s ruling political party, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP, called a debate on the place of Islam in France, a move that some say risked stigmatising a portion of the population.

Police received a guide last week to help implement the ban. It tells them not to remove veils by force. It also notes that the ban does not apply inside private cars but reminds policemen such cases can be dealt with under road safety rules.

Rachid Nekkaz, the man who called for the Notre Dame prayer, said in a webcast that he was putting a property worth about €2 million up for sale to help fund his campaign.

“I am calling on all free women who so wish, to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience,” he said.

French police arrested 59 people on Saturday who turned up for a banned protest over the veil ban, one of them on arrival in France from Britain, according to a police spokesman.

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Charlie Sheen enters Rehabs for drug and alcohol abuse with pornstar in orgies.

For fans of Two and a Half Men, the news that Charlie Sheen would voluntarily enter a rehabilitation center was no doubt bittersweet: The 45-year-old actor could get the help that he needs even though his ...

WikiLeaks founder says enjoys making banks squirm

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up CD’s containing data on offshore bank account holders, which he received from former Swiss private banker Rudolf Elmer at the Frontline club in London on January 17, 2011.


WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he enjoys making banks squirm thinking they might be the next targets of his website which has published US diplomatic and military secrets.

“I think it’s great. We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it’s them,” Assange told the CBS television programme “60 Minutes” in an interview.

CBS released a partial transcript yesterday ahead of Sunday’s broadcast of the full segment.

Bank of America Corp shares fell more than 3 per cent on November 30 on investor fears that the largest US bank by assets would be the subject of a document release.

Interviewer Steve Kroft asked Assange whether he had acquired a five-gigabyte hard drive belonging to one of the bank’s executives, as Assange had previously asserted.





“I won’t make any comment in relation to that upcoming publication,” said Assange, who is under a form of modified house arrest in England, awaiting an extradition hearing to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex offences that he denies.

Assange had told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks planned a “megaleak” by releasing tens of thousands of internal documents from a major US bank in early 2011 that he expected would lead to investigations of the bank.

In an October 2009 interview, Assange told Computerworld that WikiLeaks had obtained five gigabytes of data from a Bank of America executive’s hard drive.

The Forbes interview came just after WikiLeaks released 250,000 US government diplomatic cables. Previously, WikiLeaks had made public nearly 500,000 classified US files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Major headlines were generated by some of the cables, which revealed that Saudi leaders had urged US military action against Iran and detailed contacts between US diplomats and political dissidents and opposition leaders in some countries.

Assange told “60 Minutes” he fully expected US retaliation but that the American government was incapable of taking his website down.

“The US does not have the technology to take the site down. ... Just the way our technology is constructed, the way the Internet is constructed,” Assange said.

“We’ve had attacks on particular domain names. Little pieces of infrastructure knocked out. But we now have some 2,000 fully independent in every way websites, where we’re publishing around the world. It is — I mean, it’s not possible to do.”

WikiLeaks says it is a nonprofit organisation funded by human rights campaigners, journalists and the general public. Launched in 2006, it promotes the leaking of information to fight government and corporate corruption.

WikiLeaks: UN chief offered Mugabe deal to step down

File photo of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe attending the third European Union-Africa summit in Tripoli November 29, 2010


Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan offered Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe a deal to step down and live in a safe haven, but the veteran leader rejected the offer, according to US documents obtained by WikiLeaks.

A confidential document dated September 2000 showed that a source from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party told US officials in Harare the party had been told that Annan, the former UN Secretary General Annan, had made the offer to Mugabe during a UN summit in New York.

The source said the MDC did not know the details of the deal, reported to it by a businessman, but that it likely guaranteed Mugabe a financial package from Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and a safe haven, the cable showed.




“Kofi Annan, in the recent meeting in New York during the Millennium summit, offered Mugabe a deal to step down,” according to the document.

“The opposition party heard that Mugabe turned down the offer the following day after discussing it with the first lady.”

A spokeswoman for Annan declined to comment.

Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 and although there has been talk of several plans to ease him from office in the last decade, the 86-year-old has rejected the idea, saying he would never live in exile.

According to another confidential US cable published by WikiLeaks dated October 2009, a senior MDC official suggested that the US should contribute to a fund to buy off security service chiefs.

Elton Mangoma, a senior member in the MDC and minister in the unity government, told US officials that the military men were frustrating reform and did not want to leave office fearing that they had not made enough money and could be prosecuted.

“Mangoma asked for consideration of US contribution to a ‘trust fund’ that could be used to negotiate the service chiefs’ retirement. He said he planned to approach the UK and Germany with the same request,” the documents said.

The service chiefs have in the past publicly backed Mugabe during elections, saying they would not acknowledge a leader who had not fought in the independence war, a reference to Tsvangirai.

Kremlin Fires Defiant Moscow Mayor Luzhkov

Long-time Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov accused President Dmitry Medvedev of leading the country back into Stalinism a day before he was sacked, a letter in a Russian magazine showed Wednesday.

Rockers blasted over Indonesia tobacco deal

Australian, British and US rock bands including The Smashing Pumpkins and Stereophonics have been urged to withdraw from a music festival in Indonesia because of its tobacco sponsorship.

Anti-tobacco activists and health experts from Australia, the United States and Wales have expressed their concern that the bands' actions will encourage youths to smoke in a country with high and rising addiction rates.

The country of some 240 million people is one of the last lightly-regulated major tobacco markets in the world and is paying the price in terms of growing rates of addiction, especially among women and children.



Cigarette consumption in Indonesia soared 47 percent in the 1990s, according to the World Health Organisation











Its reputation as the wild west of tobacco control was graphically illustrated earlier this year with the release of a video on the Internet of a two-year-old Javanese boy with a 40-cigarette-a-day habit.

The Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said it had written to US bands The Smashing Pumpkins, MUTEMATH and Dashboard Confessional asking them to cancel their appearances at the Java Rockin'Land festival next month.

"As long as this event is sponsored by a tobacco company, any band that participates should know that it is helping market cigarettes to children," Campaign president Matthew L. Myers said.

"If these bands reject tobacco sponsorship, they can send a powerful message that they care about the health of the world?s children and will not allow their name and talent to be used to market deadly tobacco products."

In Australia, health experts have accused local bands The Vines and Wolfmother of ignoring the connection between tobacco marketing and smoking-related deaths.

"Tobacco industry marketing is a key factor in what is killing people from tobacco-caused disease -- about six million a year in fact," Simon Chapman and Becky Freeman of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health wrote in an article on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's website.

Indonesia has "virtually no tobacco control policies", making it a "tobacco industry paradise where publicity for music festivals like the one Wolfmother and The Vines will participate in wallpaper the country's media," they said.

In Britain, anti-smoking group Ash Wales has similarly condemned Welsh band Stereophonics for agreeing to play at the October 8 to 10 festival in Jakarta.

"We urge the Stereophonics to demand the withdrawal of tobacco sponsorship and any associated branding from the festival or alternatively to pull out," Ash Wales chief executive Tanya Buchanan told Wales Online website Tuesday.

"If the Stereophonics go ahead with a tobacco-sponsored concert they are, by choice, being spokespeople for the tobacco industry and helping them to market to children."

In all, 14 foreign bands are scheduled to play at the festival, along with a host of local acts. Advertising for the event includes cigarette branding and tickets are being sold at a discount to students.

The festival, billed as the biggest in Southeast Asia, is being sponsored by Gudang Garam, a major Indonesian producer of clove cigarettes.

The company regularly sponsor music events targeted at young people, saying it wants to promote Indonesian bands and associate its product with rock'n'roll values.

Wolfmother has responded to the criticism by issuing a statement on its website saying it does not "support or condemn the sponsors" and will play the gig for the fans who have "parted with their very own cold hard cash".

In the past two years, US artists Alicia Keys and Kelly Clarkson refused to play in Indonesia until their promoters dropped tobacco sponsorships.

But several other Western musicians -- most recently former Guns'n'Roses guitarist Slash -- have played with the backing of the tobacco industry.

Indonesia earns billions of dollars a year in tax revenues from tobacco companies, which employ millions of people across the country.

Cigarette consumption in the Southeast Asian archipelago soared 47 percent in the 1990s, according to the World Health Organisation.


The Smashing Pumpkins have been urged to withdraw from a music festival in Indonesia because of its tobacco sponsorship



Indonesia is one of the last lightly-regulated major tobacco markets in the world

Games-Delhi should not have got Comm Games-Aussie chief

Delhi should not have been awarded the Commonwealth Games, Australia's Olympic chief said on Friday, heaping further pressure on Indian organisers struggling to prepare the scandal-hit event.

"The games shouldn't have been awarded to Delhi in hindsight," Australia Olympic Committee president John Coates said on Australian radio.

"But the people who will decide whether we should be there is Steve Moneghetti, the chef de mission, and Perry Crosswhite, the secretary-general of the (Australian Commonwealth Games) federation."

"And everything I'm reading from Perry -- who's a double Olympian and his focus is on the athletes -- everything I'm reading from him is that, so far is that where we are in the (athletes') village is fine."

Despite other teams threatening to pull out of the Oct. 3-14 Games over issues ranging from athletes' accommodation to safety, Australia has not wavered in its commitment to sending its athletes.

"The problem is the Commonwealth Games Federation is under-resourced," Coates was quoted by Australian media as saying in a separate report.

"It doesn't have the ability to monitor the progress of cities in the way the Olympic Committee does."

Coates said the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had contracts in place with organisers of the London and Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2012 and 2016 to meet established deadlines.

"If that had been the case (in Delhi), then certainly something would have been done a lot sooner because obviously the venues are not ready," he added.

The multi-sport event which has cost India between $3-6 billion was supposed to showcase the country's rising economic and political clout, but infrastructure failures, corruption scandals and security concerns have threatened to turn the event into a farce.







 

Games fiasco highlights fissures in India government

The Commonwealth Games fiasco opens a weakened Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to dissent within his government and may add to a policy drift over issues from economic reforms to dealing with a Kashmir revolt.

Singh’s Congress-party led coalition will likely stay in power to the end of its term in 2014. But a perception of a floundering and out-of touch leadership may bolster the rise of a more leftist inner circle led by family scion Rahul Gandhi.

The Games were meant to show India’s global clout, but filthy venues, a bridge collapse and a suspected militant attack have added to a sense the 77-year-old, increasingly overshadowed by Rahul, doesn’t control the reins of power six years in office.

An increasingly influential Rahul could push Congress to the left on policies ranging from social programmes to stricker controls for industrial projects to protect farmers, overshadowing Singh’s attempts to liberalise Asia’s third biggest economy.

For the moment, Games criticism is being heaped on officials underneath Singh, such as its organiser and Congress party lawmaker Suresh Kalmadi. But this week Singh was forced to enter the fray, with growing calls for India to get its act together.

“Multiple centres of power are emerging,” said political analyst Swapan Dasgupta. “They’ve always existed but this time they are becoming more public and the Games will only exacerbate that. Succession is always on the back of people’s minds.”

Many politicians may use a national embarrassment to juggle for influence. Rahul, son of the country’s most influential politician Sonia Gandhi, is thought by many in India to be waiting in the wings to succeed Singh.

This week, in the middle of the Games controversy, the prime minister’s own press spokesman made headlines when he appeared to criticise the government’s lack of vision. He said the comments were taken out of context, but the damage was done.

“Congress is by nature a status-quoist, pragmatic party,” Harish Khare, was reported by local newspapers as saying on Tuesday. “It does not believe in any conviction. (It’s) only conviction is to win elections.”

Those criticisms are rising in tone. Rahul also made headlines recently by effectively telling Singh to pass a land bill to help farmers.

Other politicians, like Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh seen close to Rahul, have appeared on a different page to Singh on how to enforce environmental rules for industrial projects.

No one is doubting the government’s stability. The main Hindu nationalist opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is in disarray. The ruling coalition will likely survive until 2014, or when and if it calls early elections.

But Singh appears unable to take advantage of near double-digit growth, stocks at more than a two year-high and strong capital inflows. And frustration among Rahul’s followers, who want to target more funds to social programmes, may be growing.

Many foreign investors have priced in the slow pace of India’s drive to open up the $1 trillion (RM3.09 trillion) economy, with any surprise reform a upside for investors, company executives say.

In India’s last major sports event, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi put her son Rajiv to run the 1982 Asian Games, a job that helped usher him into succeeding her as prime minister before he was assassinated in 1991.

But Indira was an autocratic and charismatic leader once labelled “the only man in her Cabinet.” Singh, by contrast, is an unassuming politician never directly elected to office.

This time round, both Sonia and Rahul have been markedly distant from the Games. Singh left it to middle-ranking leaders like Kalmadi, a decision that has boomeranged.

“Singh’s authority is increasingly coming under question and there will be some hard-thinking within Congress,” said political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan. “What we are seeing in India is a succession is slow motion.

Few would dare to push out Singh, widely seen as India’s most honest politician.

But widespread reports of corruption at the $6 billion Games, where costs ballooned more than 17 times, can hardly help the leftist Congress party with its pro-poor image.

While it relies mainly on support of poor farmers, who account for half of India’s 1.2 billion plus population, 24-hour news cycles mean these controversies have longer tentacles.

The reports may alienate a middle class, and millions more voters with middle class aspirations. Congress in part won the 2009 vote due to this vote bloc drifting from the BJP.

“The middle class votes more on issues than regional and caste politics,” said Yashwant Deshmukh, head of C-Voter Polling Agency . “They are more fickle and we may see a reaction.” But as rumblings surface around Singh, other commentators say there is still a long way to go before his rule is history.

“People have always underestimated Singh,” said Jahangir Aziz, chief India economist at JP Morgan, referring to Singh’s ability to survive six years in government. “People mistake his soft-spokenness for weakness. That weakness is simply not there

Iran hits at UN nuclear watchdog, defies West

Iran said today the UN nuclear watchdog was suffering a crisis of “moral authority and credibility”, underlining worsening relations between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In a speech to IAEA member states including the United States, Iran’s nuclear energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi also voiced continued defiance over international demands that the Islamic state stop work the West suspects is aimed at making atom bombs.

Iran’s nuclear energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi shows continued defiance over international demands that the Islamic state stop work the West suspects is aimed at making atom bombs.

“The uncivilized double-track approach of threat and dialogue cannot be conducive and fruitful,” he said, referring to the West’s policy of imposing sanctions on Iran while offering incentives for it to back down in the eight-year row.

Speaking shortly afterwards at the same annual assembly of the 151-member Vienna-based United Nations body, the US representative urged Iran to meet its international obligations.

“Otherwise it is clear that there is a broad and growing international consensus that will hold Iran accountable if it continues its defiance,” US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.

The United States remained committed to pursuing a diplomatic solution but Iran must assure the rest of the world of the peaceful nature of its nuclear intentions, Chu said.

Salehi criticised the IAEA’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear work as unfair and suggested Western powers had influenced it.

“It appears that the agency is suffering from (a) moral authority and credibility crisis,” Salehi said.

The report showed Iran escalating nuclear fuel enrichment work, which it says is for peaceful uses only, in defiance of tougher UN, US and European sanctions introduced since June.

It also voiced frustration over Iran’s lack of full cooperation with IAEA inspectors and investigators.

Relations between Iran and the IAEA have deteriorated since Yukiya Amano took over as head of the agency in December.

He has taken a blunter approach on Iran than his predecessor Mohamed ElBaradei, saying in his reports to the IAEA’s board of governors that Tehran could be trying to develop a nuclear-armed missile now, not only at some point in the past.

Iran said in June it had barred two IAEA inspectors, accusing them of giving “false” information on its activities.

Amano, a Japanese diplomat, has said Iran’s repeated rejections of his staff was hampering the IAEA’s work and Western powers have accused Tehran of intimidating the agency.

Salehi also called on major powers to resume talks “without further delay” on a plan to provide nuclear fuel to a Tehran medical reactor in exchange for some of its low-enriched uranium stockpile – potential bomb material if refined to a high level.

Regarded at the time by world powers as a prospective confidence-building step, the deal stalled last year after Iran backed away from the initial terms for an atomic fuel swap.

Western diplomats do not rule out a resumption of the nuclear fuel discussions. But they stress the need for broader negotiations which they hope will lead to Iran suspending uranium enrichment, something it has repeatedly ruled out.

In its statement at the IAEA assembly, the European Union urged Iran to meet with major powers “with the ultimate goal of establishing a comprehensive relationship, involving cooperation in all fields ... and benefiting both sides.”

In Washington today, a US Treasury official said Iran was struggling with international sanctions and pressure on its economy and banking sector was mounting.

Iran, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, has dismissed the impact of sanctions on its economy. Salehi denounced the punitive measures as “unjustified and illegal”.

Protesters accuse pope of hypocrisy over sex abuse

Pope Benedict reminded his Church today that its first priority was to provide a safe environment for children as the pontiff was met by the first substantial protest of his delicate visit to Britain.

Several hundred people whistled and shouted “Pope must resign” and “shame” as the papal motorcade entered a Catholic school complex in Twickenham, southwest London.

They held placards reading “Hypocrisy and lies” and “Catholic paedophile cover up”.

The shouting of the protesters duelled with the singing of hymns from inside the school, where the pope held what was dubbed “the big assembly” of several thousand Catholic schoolchildren from throughout Britain.

Pope Benedict waves to pilgrims as he arrives to attend a prayer service at St Mary’s University College Chapel at Twickenham in west London today, September 17, 2010.


Addressing teachers and administrators in the school’s chapel, the pope, who was likely to have heard the protesters as he entered, said Catholic schools had to provide “a safe environment for children and young people”.

He continued: “Our responsibility towards those entrusted to us for their Christian formation demands nothing less. Indeed, the life of faith can only be effectively nurtured when the prevailing atmosphere is one of respectful and affectionate trust.”

British bishops have dealt with the problem of child sex abuse earlier, more quickly, and more decisively than in other countries such as Ireland or the United States.

“I pray that this may continue to be a hallmark of the Catholic schools in this country,” the pope said during the visit, which tens of thousands of other British schoolchildren watched from the classrooms throughout the country.

The sex abuse scandal, in which priests who abused children were moved from parish to parish instead of being defrocked to turned over to police, has hounded Benedict’s five-year papacy even though most of the abuse took place decades ago.

“The Church’s handling of the abuse scandal is shocking because it shows the Church’s priorities are the other way around, protecting the perpetrators instead of the children,” said one of the protesters, 38-year-old Ben Carey.

Yesrterday, the pope told reporters aboard the plane from Rome that he was shocked by what he called “a perversion” of the priesthood and acknowledged that the Church had not been sufficiently vigilant and decisive in dealing with the scandal.

Advocates for victims have long been calling for Church leaders to assume more legal and moral responsibility for allowing the sexual abuse scandals to get out of hand in the United States and several countries in Europe.

Some have accused him of being part of a system that turned a blind eye to abuse for decades when he held other Church offices before his election.

The Catholic Church in Britain runs some 2,800 schools, including 22 universities and the pope defended the work of schools, which are attending by many non-Catholics.

One of the main themes so far of the pope’s trip, only the second by a pontiff in history, is for Britons to re-discover their Christian roots and to be aware of the threat of what he has called “aggressive secularism” that excludes God from the public arena.

Benedict has a delicate path to tread in England and Scotland in relations with the Anglican church after his offer last October making it easier for disaffected Anglicans, unhappy over the ordination of women and gay bishops, to convert.

These relations could be thrown into sharp focus later today when the pope is due to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England, the Anglican mother church, at Lambeth Palace in London.