AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun
Editorial
A PUFF of white smoke emerging from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel will announce the election of a new pope.
But it might also signal surrender. Better a cannon shot to declare a war within the ranks of the Catholic Church that can be won only by a warrior pope.
The successor to Benedict XVI must be a fiercer pope to remind its clergy they once followed a fiercer God.
While the church is slow to accept more modern challenges of homosexuality, abortion, even contraception, it is sexual abuse, particularly the abuse of children, that should bring down a wrath instead of a whimper.
Pope Benedict recognised this abuse as an “evil” but did not lead his bishops to strike it down. In his private safe, under lock and key, waiting for his successor to make a judgment, is a dossier said to contain even more startling and profane revelations than have been levelled at some of the most senior figures in the church.
What is already known of the church’s cover-ups requires more than a confession and more than a penance in restoring what has been taken from the lives of its victims. It demands a purge of those the church has protected by keeping secret their sins.
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