Pope Hopes to Visit US, France in 2008

Pope Benedict hopes to visit the United States and France next year, his spokesman said on Sunday.

Father Federico Lombardi told reporters in northern Italy, where the Pope is on a private mountain holiday, that planning for both trips was in the initial stages.

The Pope has been invited to visit the United Nations but Vatican sources said he would most likely extend the trip to include several other American cities besides New York.

Vatican sources have said the trip would probably take place in spring so as not to coincide with the final stages of the campaign for next year's presidential election.

It would be his first trip to the United States as Pope.

There has been speculation that he would visit Boston, the city which was at the centre of a priestly sexual abuse scandal that forced its archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, to resign in disgrace in 2002.

The announcement of the Pope's desire to visit the United States came as the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating back as far as the 1940s.

The settlement, which means victims will receive more than $1 million each, is the largest from the Catholic Church in recent years following many cases in which victims sought financial compensation for suffering abuse from priests.

The scandal rocked the US Church to its foundation and before his election as pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger went out on a limb to decry the "filth" in the Church.

Benedict, who was elected in 2005, has taken a tougher stand on sexual abuse in the Church than his predecessor and a stop in Boston could have a healing element.

Last year he disciplined Rev Marcial Maciel Degollado, the 86-year-old founder of the conservative Legionaries of Christ, who had been accused of sexually abusing boys decades ago.

Lombardi said the Pope also hopes to visit Lourdes next year for the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Madonna at the shrine city in France.

He is already scheduled to visit Australia in July 2008 to preside at the World Day of Youth, an international meeting of young Catholics.

Benedict is due to visit Austria this September.