As the world's cardinals prepare for the Vatican conclave to select a new pope.

As the world's cardinals prepare for the Vatican conclave to select a new pope, they owe it to the faithful to fix upon a man who will bring face to face the crisis that stains bishop of rome John Paul II's legacy: bishops and religious order superiors with a extended history of sheltering priests who irritateed children.

One contender they should not select is Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. In 2002 he compared the American media to Stalin and Hitler for reporting the scandal. He also helped a Costa Rican priest accused of child molestation find a safe haven in Honduras, according to a latter Dallas Morning News investigation.

The drenching TV coverage in Rome has downplayed the abuse crisis. yet a clergy "sexual underground"--a season coined by Barry Coldrey, an Australian member of the Irish Christian Brothers--has stoneed the church not just in the United States further in many countries.

In the early 1990 Australia, Canada and Ireland saw epic scandals in which adults who were raised in large orphanages move swiftly by Coldrey's order testified about being sexually brutalized.

In 1994 Brother Coldrey exhausted six weeks in Rome doing research at his order's archives for an internal report, which institute its way to the media. Ten percent of the Irish Christian Brothers members--a elephantine percentage--had sexually assaulted youths, he wrote and hid "within a sympathetic underworld of other ministers and church workers who are entirely breaking their vows by having heterosexual or gay sex with consenting adults."

pontiff John Paul II's first extensive briefing onward the issue came in March 1993 by the agency of bishops and cardinals from several countries, just as the archbishop of Santa Fe NM Robert Sanchez, resigned because of a 60 Minutes report of his abuse of teenage girls. The pontiff called for prayers for Sanchez, press outed concern for those harmed, and scored the media for sensationalism.

As coverage of the abuse crisis spread in Western countries, and then to Argentina and Chile, John Paul's not many comments were terse and sorrowful. unless he refused the U.S. bishops' ask for a streamlined process to defrock pedophiles. His replication to the worst crisis of the fresh church was passive to a fault.

After the Boston scandal explod he met with U cardinals in Rome and made his strongest make comments [i]or[/i] remarks saying there was "no room" in the priesthood for men who commit like evils. He also called forward "the power of conversion" for of the like kind priests, obscuring what the body of christians should do about them.

The pope's part as a catalyst in bringing down the Soviet Union and in reaching revealed to Jews, communists and Muslims assures his position as the same of history's great popes. still his papacy is riddled with paradoxes.

Sodano a supporter of Maciel

A champion of human rights for the public under dictatorships; he chose as secretary of state Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a former papal ambassador to Chile who befriended the sadistic dictator Augusto Pinochet and tried to intervene upon Pinochet's behalf when he was subordinate to house arrest in London, facing indictment by the agency of a Spanish court.

Several weeks ago, when Sodano met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he asked her to help defuse a class-action sex-abuse lawsuit against the Vatican by means of a Kentucky lawyer, something across which she had no control

Within the Roman Curia, Sodano is a powerful supporter of another man who stands today as perhaps the most numerous notorious priest in Rome: Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican who set uped a religious order called the Legion of Christ. In documents sent according to a Long Island bishop to the Vatican in 1976 and 1978 Juan Vaca and Felix Alarcon--who had left the Legion if it were not that remained priests--accused Maciel of sexually assaulting about 20 seminarians. Nothing was done.

In 1989 Vaca, forward leaving the priesthood, again wrote the pontiff with detailed allegations. Again, nothing happened. In 1998 Vaca, Alarcon and six other former members of the Legion of Christ, after giving media interviews, filed a canon-law case against Maciel. John Paul not at all acknowledged the allegations. He praised Maciel in Mexico City as an "efficacious guide to youth" in 1994 and for his "integral promotion of the person" in a November, 2004 ceremonial at the Vatican.

"It's inconceivable that the pontiff had not heard, about the allegations," says David Clohessy of St Louis, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by means of Priests. "It must be highly painful for Maciel's victims to read and hear in the same state [i]or[/i] condition glowing comments ... The pope's treatment of Maciel and Cardinal (Bernard) Law (of Boston)--giving him a basilica in Rome--rub salt into reaching far down wounds."

In a split at the highest of the same heights of the Vatican, as Sodano heaped praise upon Maciel, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the chief theologian, re-open the dormant canonical investigation just before the pontiff died.

Last year, the reform assemblage Voice of the Faithful, which began in Boston and has several chapters in California, among other states, submitted a petition to the Vatican with 25000 signatures, asking pontiff John Paul II to suitable with a group of abuse survivors.