This is intended strictly as a GQ. I’m aware that due to the volatile nature of the subject matter, the discussion may take a turn that necessitates its being moved to another forum. I’ll leave that in the able hands of the mods.
The awareness that Roman Catholic priests had been engaging in widespread sexual abuse of children in their parishes became widespread at least a decade ago. Many of the priests who committed such crimes have been prosecuted.
One of the factors that enabled some of the priests to abuse as many children as they did was that higher-ups in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) - bishops, archbishops, cardinals, I presume - moved the priests to new parishes when it looked as if their current parish was catching on to their behavior.
There had to be more than a few such complicit higher-ups, just in the U.S.
And of course, the same pattern clearly occurred in a number of other countries.
My question is, what has the RCC done about these complicit higher-ups? Have they conducted their own investigation? If so, what bishops, archbishops, cardinals, etc. have they disciplined, and in what ways, not for abusing children themselves, but for covering up the abuse that others in the Church did?
It is not my desire to argue the sufficiency, or lack of it, of the RCC’s response in this thread. But I’ve heard nothing about any such response over the years, and of course there’s the instance of Cardinal Law’s Roman sinecure. Hence my curiosity about what the RCC has done to identify and discipline those responsible for covering up the offenses of priests who sexually abused children.
