I was raised Catholic, but I've come to equate the institution--in it's literally atrocious history of crimes against humanity--with organized crime, minus an honor code.

One of the many reasons I hate organized religion.

The RCC is constitutionally incapable of real, substantive, decisive, permanent change. To do that it would have to own its own role and make major systemic and doctrinal changes, such as dropping the celibacy requirement for the priesthood. That in turn raises the spectre of undermining the doctrine that papal decrees and published church tradition / rules are inerrant.

But from an RCC perspective, all is not lost. Special pleading allows people to not see the RCC as the entrenched nest of pedophiles that it actually has become. Even if the PA AG's report is repeated in the many other states following PA's lead, with equal success, the US will NEVER cast the RCC out like it would any non-religious organization that was so thoroughly and obviously corrupt. Nor will it even particularly hold it accountable. What Frances is doing here with the archbishop just reflects what host countries generally do with miscreants like the archbishop. No matter what the archbishop was guilty of, he's got that godly aura of "nobility" around him, he does many good works, so a fundamental moral failure and unforgivable harms to the most vulnerable just becomes a minor peccadillo to be generously forgiven. And restitution? For the most part, fugeddaboudit. Oh, the church will use a few of its amassed billions to pay off the fines, etc., and my guess is they will carve out billions more to be ready for the next set of revelations. They'd rather buy their way out than actually change.