WASHINGTON — After his third call in as many days for the healing of those damaged as children by the “evil” of sexual abuse by priests, Pope Benedict XVI yesterday made an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation himself: He met and prayed privately with several of the victims.

The pontiff gathered at least five victims, middle-aged men and women, at the papal ambassador’s home, along with Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston. News stories about the priestly abuse in that diocese spurred a church scandal in 2002 that eventually spread across the nation, sapped the finances of many dioceses — including Providence — and plunged the Catholic Church in American into the worst crisis of its 200-year history.

Three of the participants spoke emotionally about the meeting in an interview on CNN, each saying that he or she drew hope and some optimism from it.

“I basically told him I was an altar boy in the sacristy praying to God … and it wasn’t just sexual abuse, it was spiritual abuse,” said Bernie McDaid of Lynn, Mass., who was one of more than a dozen parishioners of the late Rev. Joseph Birmingham, who sexually abused boys in parishes outside Boston between 1961 and his death in 1989.

“I told him,” McDaid said, “he had a cancer in his church” that he needed to address.

Olan Horne, another Boston-area victim, said the 25-minute meeting was unscripted and that they were allowed to tell the pope anything they wanted. He said he didn’t think he needed another hollow apology from the church, but that the pope showed sincere regret and offered him hope.

“I got up to him and I burst into tears,” said Faith Johnston. “I think my tears alone spoke so much.”

BENEDICT MET with the victims after celebrating Mass before 46,000 at Nationals Park, the new Washington baseball stadium, and preaching a homily that continued the strongest remarks a pope has ever made on the emotional topic.

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” the pope said. “It is important that those who suffered be given loving pastoral instruction. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the church.”

Benedict said, “Great efforts have already been made to deal honestly and fairly with this tragic situation, and to ensure that the children –– whom Our Lord loves so deeply, and who are our greatest treasure –– can grow up in a safe environment.”

Benedict told the crowd: “Today I encourage each of you to do what you can to foster healing and reconciliation and to assist those who have been hurt.”

After the historic Mass, which sounded such central themes of Benedict’s pastoral visit as hope, reconciliation and forgiveness, the pontiff and the Boston archbishop met with the victims.

“This is a historic moment,” said Raymond L. Flynn, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, who had been among those joining Cardinal O’Malley in seeking to get Boston on the 81-year-old pontiff’s American itinerary as a way of confronting the scandal.

Ultimately, the pontiff’s meeting with the sex-abuse victims was only announced after it had occurred.

“Now the pope has opened the door, and the healing can finally begin,” said Flynn, who is also a former Boston mayor. Referring to the pope’s latest call upon Catholic clergy to bind the wounds of the sex-abuse victims, Flynn said, “Now the pope has done his part in the process. He’s a man of his word.”

The Boston scandal shocked one of the nation’s oldest Catholic communities, with charges that then-Cardinal Bernard F. Law and other high church officials had long been aware of the abuse involving dozens of priests and hundreds of children from the 1950s on — but failed to put a stop to it.

Cardinal Law resigned in disgrace in 2002. He was replaced in 2003 by O’Malley, a Capuchin friar who had impressed church leaders with his handling of the sex-abuse scandal around the Rev. James Porter in the Fall River diocese in 1992.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, meanwhile, the future pontiff was in charge of a high Vatican office that included responsibility for responding to the sex-abuse scandals in the United States and elsewhere. Outwardly, at least to victims’ organizations, Rome’s response to the horrors appeared mild.

“John Paul II was old and getting ill,” said the Rev. James Martin, acting publisher of the Catholic weekly magazine “America.” Behind the scenes, he said, Cardinal Ratzinger proved to be “more of a hardliner” than the aging pope. “He was the guy who knew all the gory details” because he had to read the cases of the pedophile scandals, Father Martin said. At one point, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of the abuse as “filth.”

After becoming pope, Benedict made a strong first impression regarding the scandal by expelling from the ministry the founder of a renowned Catholic organization because of sexual abuse. Benedict’s action against the Rev. Marcial Maciel “showed that he was unwilling to sweep things under the carpet,” Martin said.

“It would not be surprising,” Father Martin speculated on the eve of Benedict’s trip, for him to attempt a bold stroke on the sex-abuse scandal— albeit in his own way, as a quiet, scholarly figure.

As he flew to the United States Tuesday, Benedict chose to answer a submitted question on the scandal from the traveling press. “If I read these 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,” he said, pledging to work to prevent such abuse in the future.

ON WEDNESDAY at evening prayers with the bishops, Benedict raised the topic again, not only denouncing the “gravely immoral behavior” of the pedophile priests, but also endorsing a leading American cardinal’s view that the scandal was “sometimes very badly handled.” In the elliptical world of papal pronouncements, that was viewed as a sharp rebuke indeed to the bishops.

“This was an extraordinary gesture, a tremendous gesture” that breaks with a long-standing tradition of papal distance from the pastoral concerns of individual Catholics, said Msgr. Paul Theroux, the vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Providence who has handled the sex-abuse scandal for the diocese and also has experience in dealing with the Vatican.

“This is the head of the universal church, the vicar of Christ on earth. The Holy Father on a day-to-day basis deals with heads of state,” Msgr. Theroux said, explaining that a pope almost always handles pastoral concerns through the church hierarchy. Therefore, Msgr. Theroux said, the pope’s meeting with the abuse victims yesterday is strikingly dramatic to any students of papal history.

Coming after three successive days in which Benedict discussed the shame of the sex-abuse scandal in terms unprecedented for a pope, Msgr. Theroux said that Benedict’s meeting with the sex-abuse victims will carry a powerful symbolic message throughout the church.

“Even though this is only a small, representative group” of the many Catholics harmed by abusive priests, Msgr. Theroux said yesterday’s meeting “speaks of how significant this issue is to the Holy Father.”

However, he said he thinks it unlikely that many individual victims of the sex abuse or the organized groups that represent them “will suddenly say tomorrow, ‘Well, now we’ve turned the corner.’ ”

Theroux said he also fears that because the pope met with so few victims yesterday, some critics will view the gesture as insufficient.

But the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called the meeting “a positive first step on a very long road.” The group, which has been fiercely critical of the church, said it hopes the meeting will lead to reform in how church leaders respond to abuse claims.

Material from McClatchy Newspapers and the Associated Press was used in this report.Benedict’s schedule

•9:45 a.m. today: Arrives at JFK airport in New York City.

•10:45 a.m.: Addresses U.N. General Assembly.

•5:15 p.m.: Visits Park East Synagogue.

•6:00 p.m.: Prayer service with leaders from other Christian denominations at St. Joseph’s Church in Manhattan. (AP)

jmulligan@belo-dc.com