Readers Blog: Vatican must come clean about abuse cover-up

While I welcome the Pope to Ireland, he is also the head of the Vatican, the bizarre state created in a 1929 pact with Mussolini, an absolute monarchy which has used diplomatic immunity and the secretive, parallel legal system of canon law to avoid justice and paying compensation to victims of sexual abuse, while setting the Church’s governance rules and being home to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition), the body charged with disciplining errant priests.

A grand jury report in Pennsylvania has revealed that Church leaders covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over 70 years, persuading victims not to report abuse and law enforcement not to investigate it.