A SUBTLY disquieting photograph greets visitors to the website of the northern Italian diocese of Bozen-Brixen. The dark recesses of a sunken passageway end in a flight of steps leading to daylight. A click leads to an e-mail address for reporting sexual or physical abuse by priests. The first person to use it spoke anonymously to the newspaper Corriere della Sera. As a wartime evacuee, he recalled how a village curate “felt my trousers, tried to kiss me and asked me to caress him”. His younger brother told him the priest was still molesting boys 13 years later.

The web initiative has recently been praised as an exercise in openness and may be extended to other parts of Italy. Yet the e-mail address had long been on the site, and came to prominence only amid the mushrooming worldwide scandal involving hundreds of people molested by priests or in church-run institutions.

The scandal is more widespread than the one that swept through the United States in recent years, costing the church up to $2 billion in compensation payments. In recent weeks at least 350 victims have come forward in the Netherlands, along with around 300 more in Germany and Austria. In Brazil a priest and two monsignors have just been suspended from their church duties following allegations of involvement in the making of a sex video involving a youth. Most of the cases date back to a time when the church was less aware of the terrible harm caused by sexual abuse (see article) and before it had introduced stricter controls. But many old scandals touch clergy alive today. Some are now in positions of great responsibility. One is the primate of Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, who admits taking part in a grotesque inquiry in 1975 when two children, reportedly aged 10 and 14, were made to swear secrecy about their ordeal. Their abuser, though inculpated by the church, was never reported to the police.

Even worse for the church are two issues that may directly involve Pope Benedict XVI himself. One is that in 2001, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he signed an ill-phrased document that appears to order that child-abuse cases be dealt with in secret. Catholic leaders say it refers only to canon-law procedures and does not preclude criminal charges.

Secondly, while archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982, his diocese accepted a paedophile cleric who was supposedly intended to undergo therapy. But the priest (who for legal reasons may not be identified in media that can be read in Germany) was assigned to a parish where he taught at a school and abused at least one more child. The pontiff's then deputy has taken the blame for the decision and says the future pope knew nothing about it.

After being convicted in 1986, the Bavarian priest was banned from working with children but not unfrocked. Two years ago he was sent to yet another parish where by last summer he was saying mass at a camp site for young people. It was only on March 15th, three days after the archdiocese released details of his case, that he was suspended for breaking the ban. His boss, the parish priest in Bad Tölz, in deeply Catholic rural Bavaria, said he had never been told of the offending cleric's past. The previous day brought dramatic scenes at the parish church, as members of the congregation barracked a replacement priest taking the mass. Some walked out.

The pope's response to this and other cases is attracting criticism, including from prominent laymen such as Wolfgang Thierse, a former Social Democrat president of Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. He said: “The church needs to be more honest and stricter with itself, and that naturally includes the pope.” One lay organisation has even called on Pope Benedict to resign. Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, demanded “truth and clarity about everything that has happened”.

The head of the German Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, said after briefing him on March 12th that the pope had listened with “great shock, keen interest and deep sadness”. But in some eyes, that is not enough, for a man who before his election as supreme pontiff implied that he wanted to sweep out the “filth” from the church. A Catholic lay movement noted sharply that he did not send a message of sympathy to the latest victims. That stokes suspicions that the Vatican still puts its own prestige and secrecy above solace for the abused.

Indeed, the pope's main pronouncement on the affair has been on a different front: to reject, apparently out of hand, a suggested reform that some feel would deal with the roots of the problem. The cardinal archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, first advanced, then hastily disowned, a proposal for reconsidering priestly celibacy. This is obligatory for priests of the main Roman church (but not for former Anglican clerics, or for most of the priests in Eastern-rite churches that also come under papal authority). The pope declared that celibacy was not to be sacrificed for “passing cultural fashions”.

Comments by his officials have shown little appreciation of the scope and depth of the crisis. No working group or individual is fully in charge of clearing up the mess. Nor has any systematic explanation been forthcoming of the (numerous but piecemeal) steps already taken, ranging from compensation for victims to new rules on child protection. Instead the papal spokesman has hinted at an anti-Catholic plot and complained that the church is being unfairly treated because paedophiles are at least as common in other walks of life. That sits oddly with the Church's claim to represent God on earth and with the trust and respect it expects from the faithful, particularly from children (exemplified in the priestly title, “Father”).

Much hope now rests on a pastoral letter that the pope is preparing for Catholics in Ireland. Speaking to pilgrims on March 17th, he said he hoped it would help “repentance, healing and renewal” of a “severely shaken” church. A second test concerns Cardinal Brady. He said on March 15th that when he helped to silence a sex offender's victims, he was “doing what I was required to do.” That sounds a bit like the notoriously flimsy defence of “only obeying orders” which goes down especially badly with Germans. Removing the Irish primate, who has said he will only go if the pope requests it, could signal that the era of cover-ups is finally over.