Pope Francis claims to be a humble man. If that's truly the case, I hope he's bowed before an altar somewhere right now and displaying the utmost penitence, thanking the Bossman upstairs profusely for the existence of President Trump. Because as long as Trump is in power and working tirelessly every day to remain The Most Hated Man on Earth, the Vatican will probably emerge merely dinged from yet another horrifying, enduring child-abuse scandal that has destroyed lives all over the world.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Vatican is poised to release a statement regarding accusations that Francis lifted in-house “sanctions” (more on that in a second) on disgraced American archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who was accused of molesting youths throughout his career and for whom the Church has already paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal settlements. McCarrick is hardly the first disgraced priest to operate with impunity. A Pennsylvania grand jury reported that more than 300 priests were abusers in that state alone. Seven other states are conducting similar investigations, and more are on the way. The victims number in the thousands, and likely in the tens of thousands. And that's merely the abuse we know of. History tells us there will be more, and it will be never-ending.

So whatever the Vatican eventually has to say about all this, it will be worthless. Last month, Pope Francis released a statement condemning the abuse and apologizing outright for it. It’s a very florid letter, full of the kind of self-flagellation that has defined the Catholic brand for centuries now.

With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.

Now, those are strong words. Those are the kinds of words I expect from a man who has set himself apart from other popes in terms of his accessibility and his candor. And yet…what will Pope Francis REALLY do about this scandal? His letter says the Church will have “zero tolerance” for abusers, but what will that policy entail? Does that mean more “sanctions” for people who belong in prison otherwise? Those sanctions are hilariously light, and include punishments such as being unable to take business trips and being forbidden to "celebrate Mass in public." Ah, yes, what better way to deal with a sexual predator than to consign him to the shadows, where he can operate in even greater secrecy, and then do nothing else to him. What could go wrong? They won't even excommunicate these guys, and excommunication is nothing.

Francis is awfully direct about taking action to punish this kind of monstrousness, but he’s conspicuously less proactive about taking any sort of action to prevent it. Having zero tolerance for proven child molesters and saying "This is bad!" after they're exposed is the least the Vatican can do, and they’ve been doing the least for a very, very long time now.

“Too many corrupt institutions endure simply because they’re so entrenched as to be unkillable, and this church is perhaps the worst example of the lot.”

None of this is new. The Catholic Church has been embroiled in horrifying sex scandals since I was a child. It is Penn State times a thousand, and that’s actually a mathematical understatement. The abuse is systemic, ongoing, and global. It reaches children in every corner of the world, and the most vulnerable children at that. It is a fucking SCOURGE, and the Catholic Church deserved to run out of second chances a long time ago. There is no indication that Francis will take the two most obvious steps to prevent abuse—to let priests marry and to allow women to be ordained as priests. And if he’s unwilling to do that, then really, what fucking good is he? What good is the Church itself?