A familiar pattern of denial from Church

The latest papal admission of priestly abuse of nuns follows the familiar pattern we saw with the abuse of children: Centuries of Church denial and minimisation, the eventual public realisation that the issues are widespread and endemic, the Church’s realisation that plausible deniability has been lost, then finally the grand papal admission. The sexual abuse of nuns is particularly embarrassing for the Church. It explodes the Catholic myth that the enemy is homosexuality. In the case of the abuse of nuns it is straight priests who are being caught with their pants down.

The Pope loves to assume the moral high ground on any issue he pleases. It seems to have escaped him that moral credibility is the result of your own organisation behaving morally. The Pope and his predecessors should have spent the last few centuries loudly and openly stamping out sexual abuse in the Church, with the welfare of victims their only priority. They chose not to.