What could the Pope do, as one person asked?
Many, many things:
He should immediately remove from the clergy all bishops who are known to be corrupt and abusers. There are about twenty, starting with Mr. Sanchez of Santa Fe (he of girlfriends A, B, C, D, E…).
He should immediately remove from the cardinalate, and probably from the clergy, all Cardinals who have known about the abuse of children and let it go on. We should have Mr. Law and Mr. Mahony.
He should order all dioceses and religious orders to publish the names of all known abusers and to open their archives to researchers.
He should admit the failures of his predecessors, at least of Paul VI and John Paul II, who were informed of the abuse and refused to act against it.
He should halt the processes for their canonization. Those Popes failed, and children were raped and committed suicide.
He should discuss the sources of his own blindness for so many years. I have documents with his signature on them: he knew about some of the worst cases, such as El Paso. Did he really have no idea of what had occurred in the cases he handled?
He should take up world-wide collection for the victims of abuse and sell a few items from the Vatican to pay into this fund.
If Benedict does at least this, perhaps bishops through to the world will know he is serious and then and only then will they stop their clergy from abusing young people. Until then, it is all hot air, and his comments will be ignored as so much PR.