So the rotweiler of the vatican has been magically transformed into a dear little benign pope, sitting on his portable throne like a child on a bouncy castle, waving at the assembled gullible (with a noticeably high proportion of shipped-in children).

As to that nasty business of the pederastic priests, he has made ample atonement, has he not, by apologising for their regrettable behaviour? Well, only after the truth of the whole sorry story had at last been uncovered.

What he has signally failed to do, and clearly has no intention of doing, is to apologise for his own part in the frantic efforts to obfuscate the whole issue by shuffling proven pederasts to alternative posts, where although abominably guilty they could continue to function as priests; and by doing his utmost to prevent the facts becoming known.

It has been suggested that he should be prosecuted for obstructing the due process of the law. While it is obvious that in any society with a sense of moral standards he is manifestly guilty, the power of the papacy, though diminished from the good old days of the Inquisition, is probably still enough to ensure that any such charge could be conveniently lost in interminable legal flummery. Hardly worth the effort, merely to demonstrate the invisible worm in any religious bud.