Unless you're Catholic. Then he's a little more than a senile old man with a funny hat. People flock to see him as any person of faith would flock to see their religious icon. Have you ever seen prayer at the Grand Mosque in Mecca? During Hajj it draws over a million worshippers.
I would like to know how he thinks an apology and essentially paying people off is going to erase what happened. As far as I'm aware it doesn't seem like a priest guilty of abuse gets fired or anything. Shouldn't he be excommunicated? Damn sure if it was your average run of the mill Catholic he would be. He's basically saying to people 'oh, I'm sorry. Here's a check. If it happens again, we have plenty of checks'.
Of course, I didn't mean they should ONLY be excommunicated. They should absolutely be put in prison. I was just speaking of church-wide discipline. That he should do all he can in HIS power to punish them, and I think that would include excommunication. Otherwise, he gives the entire Catholic community the (likely true) impression that he just doesn't give a shit what happens to people's kids.
I didn't say he had credibility, but people do think he's the end all be all of their faith. He has to do SOMETHING. For him to not do anything sends a message that he condones this crap. That's pretty bold and pretty shitty, and also not what most Catholics would expect from the pope. He is in a position of power to do something about it, even if it isn't much. He could at least try to fix the problem instead of just being a douche. Letting this continue doesn't seem very holy to me.
He's a little more than a senile man with a silly hat, he's a senile ex-nazi man with a silly hat who attempted to quash any good that the catholic church ever started to achieve in South America whilst a cardinal under the guise of defense against communism. Not to mention the fact his name's Ratsinger, sounds like he should be advising Saruman rather than heading a church to be honest. Excommunicate the Pope, and quicksmart.
Why did the German Christian Church turn a blind eye while millions of Jews were being murdered during Hitler's Third Reich? The answer: Because German Christians including the present Pope, Benedict XVI, were co-conspirators with the Nazis during the Holocaust. German Christians were busy being members of the murderous German Army. In fact, Pope Benedict XVXI, aka: "The Nazi Pope" was a member of the Hitler Youth, and served in an anti-aircraft brigade in the German Army. Pope's Nazi past Benedict XVI former Hitler Youth member http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7576505/
"After completing his studies at the Marcin Wadowita high school in Wadowice, in 1938 Wojtyła enrolled at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and in a school for drama.[4] He worked as a volunteer librarian and did compulsory military training in the Academic Legion, but refused to hold or fire a weapon. In his youth he was an athlete, actor and playwright and he learned as many as ten languages during his lifetime, including Latin, Ukrainian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, English other than his native Polish. He also had some facility with Russian." Him being the Pope definitely does help, but if you add being a brilliant mind to the equation... then I think you can see my point. Hate him or not... he was very intelligent and very charismatic, and that definitely helped him to manipulate.