FACTBOX: Quotes from Pope Benedict's U.S. visit

(Reuters) - During his first trip to the United States as leader of the Roman Catholic church, Pope Benedict praised the role of religion in U.S. public life but warned against secularism and repeatedly addressed the pedophile priest sexual abuse scandal that has shaken the American Church, including meeting with victims.

Here are some quotes by the pope during his six-day trip:

* "God of peace ... turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred," Benedict said on April 20 at New York's Ground Zero in words seen by some as a prayer for hijackers who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. "Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost here may not have been lost in vain. 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."

* "As young Americans you are offered many opportunities for personal development, and you are brought up with a sense of generosity, service and fairness," he told a rally of 30,000 young people on the field of St. Joseph's Seminary on April 19. "Yet you do not need me to tell you that there are also difficulties ... pathways which seem to lead to happiness and fulfillment but in fact end only in confusion and fear."

"My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers; its influence grew -- infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion -- before it was fully recognized for the monster it was," he said, referring to the Nazis of his native Germany. "It banished God and thus became impervious to anything true and good."

* "It is with joy that I come here, just a few hours before the celebration of your Pesah, to express my respect and esteem for the Jewish community in New York City," the German-born pontiff said, using the Hebrew word for Passover, while visiting a New York City synagogue on April 18.

* Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on April 18, he said the notion of multilateral consensus is "in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world's problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community." The comment appeared to refer to the United States, which led the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite lack of Security Council approval.

In an apparent reference to the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur, he said, "If states are unable to guarantee such protection (against human rights violations), the international community must intervene."

In an apparent reference to the social causes of terrorism he said, "The victims of hardship and despair, whose human dignity is violated with impunity, become easy prey to the call to violence, and they can then become violators of peace."

* "No words of mine can describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse," he said, referring the child sex-abuse scandal during a sermon to 47,000 people at Nationals Park in Washington, a new stadium hosting its first non-baseball event on April 17.

"It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the Church."

He praised U.S. society but said not everyone had gotten a piece of the American dream. "To be sure, this promise was not experienced by all the inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves."

* "I come as a friend, a preacher of the Gospel and one with great respect for this vast pluralistic society," Benedict said at the White House after U.S. President George W. Bush welcomed him at a ceremony that included a fife and drum band in colonial garb and a 21-gun salute on April 16.

* The sexual abuse scandal caused "great suffering" to the Church in America and also "for me personally," the pontiff said to reporters on the papal plane as it crossed the Atlantic on April 15. "It's difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing, to give the love of God to these children."

"We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry," he said. "...It is more important to have good priests than to have many priests."

(Reporting by Philip Pullella, Tom Heneghan, Andy Sullivan and Michele Nichols, compiled by Mark Egan and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

(For more on religion, see the Reuters religion blog FaithWorld at blogs.reuters.com/faithworld)