As Pope he may have done that, but as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he sent a letter to every Catholic bishop[1] telling them to keep abuse cases secret and claiming that the CDF had 'exclusive competence' about serious crimes - thus obstructing the pursuit of justice by secular authorities[2].

It seems fairly obvious to me that it's wrong to tolerate or enable the sexual abuse of children, and yet in 2001 Ratzinger was working on a huge, international scale to prevent the lawful authorities investigating sexual abuse.

[1] http://www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/churchdocs/EpistulaEnglish.htm

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection

Forgive me if I'm missing something, but if this was the most notable action he took - to force a sex-offender into early retirement ("sentenced" to Florida no less), then I'm not sure you've set the bar very high at all.

How about a questions of who knew what and when, what exactly was done in each case, whether or not the victim's silence was bought, and why the local police was never contacted?

It's nice that the Church, in general, took aggressive steps after the scandal being made public, and that Ratzinger, specifically, was relatively pro-active prior to that. However, I would argue that the lack of Vatican transparency or setting up of independent truth commissions on this matter (correct me if I'm wrong) will haunt the Church for the foreseeable future.

Ben, thanks for pointing out what was clearly a typo. No need for the sarcastic question after the correction.

Regarding your second paragraph, he *did* do just that. It was Ratzinger who set into motion the Church-wide movement to report all accusations to local authorities. He helped influence the U.S. Catholic Bishops' "no-tolerance" policy on abuse which is among the most stringent among any religious or secular institution.

Also, if he cared about abuse victims that much, why didn't he require bishops to report cases of sexual abuse to the POLICE who were trained and equipped to deal with them? Why does the Church think it can use "canon law" rather than the laws of the countries the abuse happened in?