Pope Benedict XVI and "Crimen Sollicitationis"

As I write, BBC1 is airing in its 'Panorama' strand a programme about the systematic policy within the Roman Catholic Church of suppressing knowledge by the secular authorities of abuses carried out by priests against male and female children, paedophilia in other words, and of its policy of enforcing secrecy of what was going on both within its own ranks and by the victims of this child abuse, upon pain of threat of 'excommunication'.

None of this is news, of course, and I have written about it on numerous occasions before (earlier reports, here and here, are in the 'Comment' section of my main website, prior to the commencement of this blog). What makes the subject of continuing topicality is that the person who oversaw this policy of suppression from the Vatican over many years, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, became Pope Benedict XVI upon the death of the former Pontiff, Pope John Paul II. It is not clear that the Roman Catholic Church's basic poicy with regard to these crimes has changed all that much, apart from actions designed to protect it against the consequences, financial and other, of its crimes and the covering up of the crimes of its paid agents, aka priests, cardinals and bishops.