The Second Space

On Saturday morning, with cameras in tow, Barack Obama was canvassing the streets of Mayfair. At a lot of the houses, no one answered.

"This reminds me of my days campaigning to be a state senator," Obama told his companions. "Only there was no media, and there were more slammed doors."

In this presidential campaign, few doors have been slammed in the face of the Illinois senator. And he has kicked in some on his own, putting himself in a strong position to win the Democratic presidential nomination over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama is fond of telling crowds that he is reminded constantly, if not by events then by his wife, Michelle, that he is "not a perfect man." For his campaign, the final stretch before the Pennsylvania primary has been not a perfect time.

"I would say we had good days and we had bad days," his communications director, Robert Gibbs, said today, looking back.

Consider all that has happened recently, all of it with a Pennsylvania connection:

Last Wednesday, in the Philadelphia debate, Obama stumbled at times, struggling with a series of questions (which many of his supporters denounced as trivial and unfair) about his past associations and the flag lapel pin he doesn't wear.

The Friday before, Obama and company were rocked by the news that the candidate had described small-town Pennsylvanians as "bitter." He had to spend days explaining what he meant.

To respond to the controversy over his former pastor, Obama chose Philadelphia for his speech on race.

If any of this was bothering Obama in the final days, he hasn't let it show, even as he lashed out at Clinton for what he called her "slash-and-burn" tactics.

"I don't get too high when things are high. I don't get too low when things are low," he told the editorial boards of The Inquirer and Daily News last week.

"I've gotten my share of knocks and made some mistakes during the campaign, and I think I've held pretty steady throughout."

There's little question, though, that these events have complicated Obama's attempts to attract undecided voters in a state with a Democratic electorate that is tilted, demographically speaking, in Clinton's favor.

After closing the gap in the early part of April - thanks largely to spending millions of dollars on television - he had to keep doing everything right to overcome the remainder of Clinton's lead. And he hasn't. His state poll numbers have been stuck in the low-to-mid 40s, about a half dozen points behind her.

That hasn't stopped him, as he traversed the state, from continuing his playful romance with his fans.

At Wynnewood, the first stop on his Saturday whistle-stop train tour, he started talking about his rally on Independence Mall, perhaps the largest of his entire campaign with an estimated turnout of 35,000.

"I was there!" someone shouted.

"I saw you," Obama replied to the delight of the crowd.

That night, on the steps of the Capitol in Harrisburg, he was interrupted as he began to speak by the stirrings of several hundred people far off to his right.

"Can you hear me over there?" he asked, picking up their cause for concern.

"No!" they yelled.

"Well, you could hear me when I asked if you could hear," he said, chuckling, turning to the rest of the crowd. "That was kind of a trick question."

The sound system was repaired, everyone got to hear, and the candidate delivered his fifth speech of the day, this one more energetic than the ones before.

His supporters, for the most part, remain enthralled, with many of them expressing both admiration for the way he has handled his difficulties and agreement with him in calling them mere "distractions."

"They're manufactured problems," said Ruth Martelli, 63, of Reading. "I'm supporting him because he represents for me what this country should be."

"When somebody turns something negative against him, he addresses it, explains it and moves on - I like that," said Cate Kager, 49, a resident of Erie who changed her registration from Republican to Democrat for Obama. "I've hated politics. Now, I've got bumper stickers on my car, and I'm working phone banks for him."

"No one is perfect; imagine if Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln had microphones under their mouths all the time," Rita Tarves, 56, of Havertown, said of his difficulties. "I've been a pretty staunch Hillary supporter. But he's been pulling at my heels the whole time."

The voters get to decide tomorrow whether Pennsylvania will slam the door in Obama's face or decide, after a long and erratic courtship, to welcome him in.

NEW YORK: Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at Yankee Stadium on Sunday afternoon, calling the gathering of nearly 60,000 people in the stadium "a sign of the impressive growth which God has given to the Church in your country in the past 200 years."

On the last day of his visit to the United States, the pope reached to the past and the future — praying for the dead during a ceremony at ground zero on Sunday morning, and urging inclusion for people, including immigrants, at the Mass at the stadium.

The pope entered the stadium to sustained applause from a capacity crowd, many of whom waved white or gold towels — the colors of the papacy. As did his previous Mass in Washington's Nationals Park, the celebration showed the diversity of the church, with readings in a variety of languages throughout the service.

"Here we are reminded of a fundamental truth: that the church's unity has no other basis than the word of God, made flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord," the pope said. "All external signs of identity, all structures, associations and programs, valuable or even essential as they may be, ultimately exist only to support and foster the deeper unity which, in Christ, is God's indefectible gift to his church."

The pope said American Catholics needed to unite behind church teachings and resist the challenges of living in a society that increasingly values secularism, a theme he has repeated throughout his six-day visit.

"It means overcoming every separation between faith and life, and countering false gospels of freedom and happiness," he said. "It also means rejecting a false dichotomy between faith and political life."

The homily dealt primarily with issues of faith, and unlike several of his earlier public statements, the pope did not directly address one of the most difficult issues confronting the church — the child sexual abuse scandal . However, he drew applause from the stadium when he referred to another controversial topic, abortion, as part of a call to follow "unchanging truths."

"They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world — including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother's womb," the pope said.

The pope was welcomed to the stadium by Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the archbishop of New York. Cardinal Egan called the pope's visit "an immense blessing," and told Benedict that representatives of the country's 195 dioceses and archdiocese had journeyed to take part in the Mass.

"We here in the Archdiocese of New York feel especially blessed by your coming here among us," said Cardinal Egan, who repeated a message of welcome to the pope in Spanish.

About 57,000 tickets were issued for the Mass, and people who attended waited in line hours before the pope arrived.

"You see how many pack together, come to see him?" said Clemens Semon, 50, of Ozone Park, Queens. Semon, originally from the Ivory Coast, spoke as he was going into the Mass with his wife, Elizabeth. "He's a unifier, he brings hope and peace."

The pope began Sunday with an appearance at ground zero, where he prayed for peace and met with a group of survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In a brief prayer at the World Trade Center site, the pope asked for eternal peace for the people who died in the attacks and for strength and healing for their families. Making only an oblique reference to the terrorism behind the attacks almost seven years ago — "Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred" — the pope asked for determination in the world's efforts toward peace.

"Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that lives lost here may not have been lost in vain," he said at the bedrock level of the site, chilly and shrouded with fog that covered the tops of some buildings nearby. "Comfort and console us, strengthen us in hope, and give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations and in the hearts of all."

The ceremony began when the pope rode down a construction ramp at the World Trade Center site in his specially designed vehicle shortly after 9:40 a.m. As bells pealed, the pope, 81, dressed in white, walked the last quarter or so of the way down the ramp, to a small, rectangular-shaped pool where the family representatives had gathered. He was accompanied by Cardinal Egan. Kneeling briefly before the pool, the pope prayed silently before rising to light a single candle, meant to symbolize resurrection.

WASHINGTON _ Pope Benedict XVI, in a dramatic move likely to alter forever the image of his pontificate, met this afternoon with five victims of clergy sexual abuse from Boston.

The private meeting, which was first reported by the Globe this afternoon and has since been confirmed by the Vatican, was brokered by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston.

The meeting took place at the papal nunciature, which is the home of the pope's ambassador to the United States. The meeting did not appear on the pope's schedule, but took place during the window between a Mass this morning at Nationals Park and a talk that he is to deliver later this afternoon to Catholic educators gathered at Catholic University of America.

A papal spokesman told the Associated Press that O'Malley presented the pontiff with a notebook listing the names of more than one thousand abuse victims from the Boston archdiocese.

The meeting between a pope and abuse victims is a huge development in the clergy sexual abuse crisis that has roiled the Catholic Church since 2002, when the Globe started publishing a series of stories about abuse by priests. The pope at the time, John Paul II, did not visit the United States after the crisis broke -- he traveled to Canada and Mexico but flew over the United States without stopping in 2002 -- and neither he nor Benedict is known to have met with abuse survivors prior to today, despite repeated requests from victims.

O’Malley facilitated the visit with victims after the pope declined his repeated entreaties to visit Boston. O’Malley had argued that the pope could best directly address the abuse issue in Boston, viewed by many as the epicenter of the crisis, but the Vatican cited the pope’s age and health in deciding to limit his travels to New York, which is the home of the United Nations, and Washington, which is the seat of the US government.

In an interview with the Globe last Friday, O’Malley said a papal visit with victims “is really his call.’’

“I am convinced that he is very aware of the needs of our country and certainly wants to be helpful to the church in the United States by his visit,’’ O’Malley said.

Asked again last night about the prospects for a papal visit with victims, O’Malley said, cryptically, “nothing has been announced.’’

But in the Friday interview, O’Malley said he has found meeting with victims to be very helpful.

“I think it has been very positive, in helping to understand the serious damage that is occasioned by child abuse,’’ he said. “I think in the past, people were not aware of the long-range effects. And, certainly, if you have the opportunity to meet with survivors, it becomes very apparent that this kind of tragic activity in their childhood often marks a person for life and is a source of great distress.’’

O’Malley also said meetings with victims can help some reconnect with their Catholic faith.

“It also, I think, has given me an opportunity to try and reach out to survivors and to help them to realize that in the Catholic Church we have a great sorrow for what happened to them,’’ he said. “And many of the survivors themselves, in my experience, are looking for a way to reconnect with the church. Some have walked away from the church, but others have a real desire to have a relationship with the church.”

The victims – including men and women, all of them abused as minors by priests in the Boston area – met with the 81-year-old pontiff at the papal nunciature, which is the Vatican’s Embassy here, for about a half hour. They were accompanied by O’Malley.

None of the participants could immediately be reached for comment.

But David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a telephone interview, "It’s a very long-overdue small step forward, especially if it leads to reform. Talk can produce change or complicity. We hope it's the former. But the cold, hard reality is no child is safer tomorrow than they are today.''

Others were more sanguine. Carolyn E. Stys, a lay Catholic who grew up in Milton but now lives in Virginia, e-mailed after reading about the meeting to say how delighted she was. "I was not a victim but very much affected by the crisis,'' she said. "This goes a very long way to make up for Cardinal Law. Kudos to Cardinal O’Malley for his efforts."

The scale of the abuse is still the subject of some controversy, but the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which did a study for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that 4,392 priests had been accused of abusing 10,667 individuals between 1950 and 2002. The crisis led in December 2002 to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston, who was criticized for failing to remove abusive priests from ministry; John Paul II named Law to oversee a prominent basilica in Rome, and appointed O'Malley to replace him as archbishop of Boston.

Today’s meeting caps a remarkable start to Benedict’s first papal trip to the United States, in which the 81-year-old pontiff has repeatedly discussed the abuse crisis. His comments have been criticized by victim advocates, who want him to go further by disciplining bishops who failed to remove abusive priests, but the remarks have nonetheless been striking for their detail and frequency.

"This is a huge step forward,'' said the Rev. Keith F. Pecklers, a professor of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. "We basically were told before he arrived that he would probably address this topic at one event, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and now we've had three references, plus this meeting, which is hugely significant. It means he is trying to communicate that he's taking this very seriously, and that it's the fundamental issue in the US church right now in terms of trying to move forward. He wants to give a clear signal to America that he gets it.''

In his most recent comments, in a homily delivered at a Mass at Nationals Park this morning, Benedict told 46,000 worshipers “to assist those who have been hurt.’’

“I acknowledge the pain which the church in America has experienced as a result of the sexual abuse of minors,’’ he said. “No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse.’’

His remarks this morning followed a lengthy discussion of the abuse crisis last night in a speech to the 350 American bishops, who gathered to meet with the pope at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in northeast Washington.

“Among the countersigns to the Gospel of life found in America and elsewhere is one that causes deep shame: the sexual abuse of minors,’’ he said after vespers in the basilica crypt. “Many of you have spoken to me of the enormous pain that your communities have suffered when clerics have betrayed their priestly obligations and duties by such gravely immoral behavior.’’

Most strikingly, Benedict echoed a comment made by Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, saying, “responding to this situation has not been easy and, as the president of your Episcopal Conference has indicated, it was ‘sometimes very badly handled’.” He urged the bishops to work on prevention measures, but also said that most clergy “do outstanding work.’’

Benedict, who was previously not known for his concern about this issue, made clear that the issue is of concern to him on Tuesday, when he chose to take, as the first of four pre-submitted questions from reporters, a query about the abuse crisis.

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States, for the church in general, and for me personally that this could happen,’’ he said on the plane, dubbed Shepherd One. “If I read the histories of these victims, it’s difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing and to give the love of God to these children.

We are deeply ashamed, and we will do all that is possible that this cannot happen in the future.’’

Benedict has a long and complex history with the abuse crisis. He also has a deep familiarity with the crisis, because in his previous post as prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, he was in charge of the office that oversaw the abuse cases that were referred to Rome by dioceses around the world. Early in the crisis, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he appeared to minimize the scope and seriousness of the crisis. But just before he was elected pope, he referred to abusive behavior as “filth.’’ And, after being elected pope, he removed from ministry a prominent Mexican priest, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was repeatedly accused of sexual abuse but was not disciplined by Pope John Paul II.