Nowadays, religious believers are so used to hearing about sexual abuse by Catholic priests they no longer express in public their shock or their outrage.

Only those who were adults in the 1950s, during the pontificate of the austere Pope Pius XII when sexual abuse by priests was unheard of and unthinkable, can really comprehend how the prestige of the Catholic Church has been tarnished and how deep has been its moral decline since then, when phrases like “paedophile priest” and “cover-ups by bishops” did not even exist.

The Times of Malta recently reported that the Church’s credibility has been severely damaged by sexual abuse scandals and that “Pope Francis has begged for forgiveness for the ‘irreparable damage’ done to children who were raped and molested by priests” (January 17).

Until the year 2000 – before the sex abuse scandals came to light – it would have been inconceivable that the Archbishop of Malta would fly all the way to South America to investigate a Chilean bishop who is alleged to have covered up the sexual abuse of “children and teens” by “Chile’s most notorious paedophile priest”.