The efforts of victims (and now of a U.S. attorney) to make bishops accountable is often derided as bringing up ancient history (i.e., 1970) or criticized as demonstrating a failure to carryout the great biblical principle of forgive and forget (I have never been able to locate that verse).
Of the Holocaust, Benedict said:
Das Vergangene ist nie bloß vergangen. Es geht uns an und zeigt uns, welche Wege wir nicht gehen dürfen und welche wir suchen müssen.
The past is never really gone. It’s our business and it shows us the way we should not follow and the way we should seek.