For some weeks now, with a seemingly well-calculated trickle of information, information has been published almost daily about abuses committed by clerics against children and young people over several decades. The facts denounced constitute objectively serious crimes (and sins), although many of them cannot be prosecuted because the statute of limitations has already expired. There may have been criminal behavior by bishops who did not apply the law with due rigor in the prosecution of pedophile and homosexual abuse.

In the last few hours the media campaign has taken a slant, perhaps predictable, but very unfair. They want to implicate the Holy Father Benedict XVI in the scandal, under the pretext that he also, when he was Archbishop of Munich, acted with little celerity in some cases that occurred in that diocese. These are vague and ethereal news, difficult to confirm; not sufficiently verified rumors related to his very brief period in Munich, when he suffered real asphyxiation from a diocesan bureaucracy, from which he did not know how to (or could not) free himself; a structure management assistant inherited from his predecessor. It was rightly said at the time that the Church in Germany was the first creator of work and the first employer. The diocese of Munich had more than two hundred paid employees and full-time. I remember that on one occasion (early 1981), on a short trip of mine to Bavaria, I requested an audience with the Cardinal, citing my friendship with him; and that one of his secretaries refused to grant me an audience within six months. In view of this, I called his sister Maria... and that same evening I had dinner at her house.

In any case, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before being elected Pope, knew many of these facts, as prefect of the Congregation of the Faith, which is competent for sins of extreme gravity committed by ecclesiastics. But only since 2001, when special legislation was approved for very serious crimes and sins (motu proprio "Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela", in whose essay Ratzinger intervened directly and decisively), has the Holy See had the appropriate legal instrument to act in such extremely serious cases, which were not previously regulated with such severity. In this, as also happens in the juridical orders of the States, the Criminal Law adapts to new situations as they arise. In Spain, for example, legislation on gender violence is still very recent, although it used to exist, although it could not be prosecuted as rigorously as it is now.

It could be said, then, that Ratzinger's hands were tied before 2001. Therefore, only then was he able to understand in particularly serious matters. In this regard, we all remember (it is enough to enter the Internet and search the Vatican website) the impressive words that Ratzinger addressed to the crowd of faithful gathered in the Colosseum in Rome, during the ninth station of the Roman Way of the Cross in 2005, while John Paul II was dying in his rooms: "How much filth in the Church and among those who, by their priesthood, should be completely dedicated to him!

On the 19th, the Pope addressed a letter to the faithful of Ireland. In addition to strongly condemning the abuses committed there with "violence", he denounced the passivity of several bishops of that nation. He also recalls the grave responsibility before God incurred by the culprits. However, he does not stop at prophetic denunciation and lamentation. In his letter he tries to pour out words of encouragement and hope.

What consequences could derive from these denunciations that I am now commenting on? Perhaps a discrediting of the confessional Catholic Education , ignoring the immense good done to society for centuries? Perhaps a withdrawal of ecclesiastics from their ministerial obligations? Perhaps that some take advantage of this to attack ecclesiastical celibacy, with evident ignorance of the theological reasons that support it? Anything is possible. But the Church, which has twenty centuries of history, has gone through situations as complex as the present one, and even more, and has always come out of it with flying colors.