A tip of the miter to Benedict XVI, or B16 as the kids’ T-shirts read at Yankee Stadium this weekend. Maybe it was the atmosphere, but this week he hit a papal home run!

I grew up Catholic. I don’t mean a little bit Catholic; I mean a “portrait of the pope in our dining room” Catholic. It was like 14-by-20-feet. In fact, his was the only picture we had in the dining room; not one of my parents, not one of us kids, not even one of my grandparents, just the pope.

One Sunday when I was about 8 – I had already made my first Communion and done my first confession and I was, except for confirmation, a full-fledged Catholic – my sister and I had been laughing and poking each other in the line on our way up the aisle to get Communion. Now if you’re not a middle-aged Catholic, you might not understand what that means, but trust me, it was bad.

Jeepers, I remember it like it was yesterday – 1968, little lace doilies on our heads, walking up to the alter and then BAM! I got busted for clowning around.

Claire had gotten lucky, she hadn’t been caught. And we kids had a code; I would have dug my own eyes out and filled the sockets with holy water before I would have ratted on her.

So anyway, my dad drove us all home in a very quiet car – considering it had five kids in it. And we all knew that I had disappointed him with my behavior. We were all just waiting to see what my punishment would be. But my dad on the ride home had figured out my problem. He deduced that, as an 8-year-old kid, I just couldn’t pay attention long enough to walk the length of the church and back again without “rough housing.” I so wanted to say, “Claire couldn’t either and she’s 11!” But I couldn’t on account of the code, and besides, the idea of the eye thing really grossed me out.

We got home and my dad told me that I had hurt God’s feelings. But he didn’t think that I meant to be so disrespectful so he was going to teach me to have more self-control. Then we went to the dining room where God’s best friend, the pope, could help us.

We moved the dining room table. And for about an hour, while I stole glances out of the room’s big windows at the neighborhood kids playing, I practiced crossing from one side of the room to the other and pretended that I was taking Communion from the picture of the pope.

If you aren’t a middle-aged Catholic, maybe you can’t imagine the power of the pope.

So this week, the pope, and it really doesn’t matter that it’s not the same pope – this incredible symbol of authority and respect – apologized for the violated trust of thousands of little kids dating back through any and all of his predecessors’ terms.

Amen!

I personally feel that the church needs to change a few things. Practically speaking, I’ve never looked to the heavens and expected those changes to happen. But Benedict XVI asking the church’s sex victims for forgiveness was, well, downright celestial.

According to the accounts I could find on the Internet, the church has paid about $2 billion to its victims.

But Benedict’s apology wasn’t anything like paid settlements that resulted from bitter court cases. It was about “God’s messenger on Earth” articulating regret.

It wasn’t about lawyers pinning the blame. It was about the man on our collective dining room walls finally accepting responsibility.

It wasn’t about forcing traumatized young people to grow up and step forward and accuse their abusers, not knowing if anyone would believe their stories. No, it was about the “Holy Father” acknowledging the truth of their anguished accounts, including the ones that may forever go untold.

The Catholics used to call telling your sins confession. Now they call it reconciliation. The word change seemed unremarkable then, but now with Benedict’s apology, the church itself has moved toward receiving this sacrament.

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the spokesperson for the Evergreen Mountain Resort & Casino referendum campaign. She is the author of “Left Out in America” and can be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.