I had not. I read something a while ago about the Legion and child molestation but this is far more detailed and heart-breaking. This has me in tears.
“What I want is for the pope to get radicalized,” [Salazar] said. “There’s only one position, to be on the side of the violated children,” not a religious order that has among its priests “villains, delinquents, rapists, accomplices and victimizers.”
It is tragic that protecting children requires the pope to assume a "radical" posture. That puts simply but brutally the dilemma the church has created for itself.
“The Legion of Christ has no reason to exist,” [Salazar] said, echoing calls from even within the church that the Vatican should have suppressed the order 10 years ago. “It’s like taking apart a cartel; you have to remove the ringleaders and dismantle it.”
One might say the same thing about the RCC and any other organization that systematically protects child abusers: such an institution "has no reason to exist."
The victims of abuse as children live in a world where abuse and the potential for it is their world. Their bodies never forget. To reduce the effects of childhood traumas and neglects one must climb over a mountain of learned stress responses and blocked and/or looping mental ghosts always in the background creeping around.
We humans survive and reproduce. In a world where abuse is discounted and seen as the norm statistically affecting only so many minor percent of people, humans will keep reproducing victims and forcing them to live in a world that denies it is abusive.
To strive for a world without abuse is to go completely against human nature and take a high road to the top of mountain of societal problems. It is much easier to think and pray the demons in the valley of tears away.
That is why the major organizations that facilitate child abuse must be shut down. One cannot eliminate abuse but it is possible to demolish much of the infrastructure supporting it.