Petty Gossip?

I am on the road to Rome, but have paused to check my location against the sun. At the moment it seems High Noon in Vatican City, where the Pope - on the ropes - stares unblinking out at a secular world that doesn't seem to get his POV. What the current Pope calls "petty gossip" is, to the world at large, a rather serious moral and criminal fault - indecision or even cover-up regarding child sex abuse cases, on a horrific, even epic, institutional level. The world has unfairly equated the Church uniquely with perversion, when, in fact, all organisations, and walks of life, conceal such predators - but the Church does bear especial responsibility for veiling its culpability behind a uniquely (once strong) moral position, quickly eroding, perhaps gone forever.

The Rock on which the Church is built has been battered by a sea of allegations. The Pope, it seems, is in danger of a Marie Antoinette moment (let them eat cake). By thinking the crowds want crumbs, when in fact they bay for blood, things could get Barabbas-bad. It may be the Pope (by all accounts a good if seriously doctrinal man) didn't himself engage in cover-up. In which case he should have no problem doing more to reassure his flock and the wider wolves beyond. Otherwise, his Golgotha may loom sooner than expected. Which would be a shame. Good man Jesus deserves better from his kingdom on Earth.