From WNYKRs in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Late this week, Pope John Paul II spoke out on the sexual abuse revelations that have recently scandalized the church

and forced Catholics to confront what the pontiff called the mystery of evil.

The Pope beseeched church members to reconcile the pain

of human weakness with faith in divine grace. For the Catholic press, reconciling such conflicts

is an ever-present challenge. Most of the 180 member publications of the Catholic Press Association

are published by a local diocese under the authority of a bishop.

As such, in reaching their aggregate six million readers, these publications find themselves working for the very institution on which they report.

When scandal erupts, that conflict is particularly confounding.

Owen McGovern, Executive Director of the

Catholic Press Association, says his members do their best to be good Catholics and good journalists

at the same time. Any sensitive issue that comes to light, you know, we report on it and quite in depth.

I mean, this week is the best example of it.

The Boston pilot, the Archdiocesan newspaper in Boston, just did a 28-page section

on the situation involving pedophilia.

And it's quite extensive, probably more extensive than you would find in the daily newspapers.

That's true. However, it was reporting that was triggered by a scandal that first broke,

not in the diocesan newspaper, but in the Boston Globe. Do Catholic newspapers do any of this

investigative work themselves? You very seldom see a weekly newspaper break any story, mainly because of the time element.

We have small staffs.

We don't go out doing investigative work.

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