The Pope in Belgium

- the Grand Place in Brussels

So, the Pope, who has been visiting Belgium, has criticized Israel for a disproportionate response to almost a year of daily rocket attacks from Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis somehow flips the script and demands that pedophile priests in Belgium be held accountable ...

‘Condemn the abusers’: Pope demands judgement for pedophile priests as Belgium tour ends

[...] Since 2012 there have been over 700 reported cases of clerical child abuse in Belgium. Among the most excruciating episodes was the Church’s indulgent treatment of Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who was allowed to retire in 2010 after admitting to having sexually abused his nephew for 13 years. The bishop was only defrocked by Francis earlier this year in an apparent effort to draw a line under the saga ...

I find it hard to get upset about this anymore. Nothing changes, and no one cares.

Authorities can't make the Pope do anything, can't hold him accountable ... he's basically the lifetime dictator of his own country, with sovereign immunity. Why do you think B16 retired in Vatican City? (Pope will have security, immunity by remaining in the Vatican)

And the people who might be able to force a change, ordinary Catholics, seem happy to let things continue as they are.

People ask, what can be done. The Pope has many concrete steps he could take to make clergy sex abuse less likely to happen. Just one of those steps would be to make all priests mandated reporters of sex abuse to civil authorities (like teachers, etc.).

The Pope won't do that. Instead he decided that priests should be obligated to tell their superiors in the church about sex abise they knew of (but not stuff learned in confession). Do you see how that works? Pedophile priest asks his superior to hear his confession ... problem solved. (Critics say pope's law requiring priests, nuns to report sex abuse does not go far enough)

But we'll all just go on seeing the Pope as some kind of moral authority, while he evades any responsibility for past and future crimes of his church.