After weeks of silence, Pope John Paul II issued a vague Holy Week message, saying, "As priests we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of ordination" and offered "concern" for the victims. But the muted words would not satisfy those looking for a concrete course of action. In a Palm Sunday pastoral letter, Egan reiterated his policy of overseeing abuse allegations himself but urged victims to bring them to the attention of police. And he defended his Bridgeport conduct like a lawyer: every case disclosed had occurred on his predecessor's watch; he took the word of experts when he recycled abusive priests back into the ministry.

Culture of Secrecy
Many of us may have just awakened to the stunning extent of priestly pedophilia since January, when the Boston Globe exposed the predations of John Geoghan and the habit the diocese had of systematically concealing them. But the U.S. church has known all about it — how deep sexual misconduct ran, how widespread, how frequent — at least since the first big abuse scandal broke at a Louisiana trial in 1985, when the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe was sentenced to 20 years for molesting dozens of children, who were awarded a combined $18 million in damages.

In the years that followed, there were more big cases and big financial settlements — an estimated $1 billion or more — but only halfhearted efforts to adopt firm guidelines on how to handle the problem. Early on, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, then a canon lawyer at the Vatican embassy in Washington, drafted a 100-page report advising that offenders be moved away from kids, that victims be succored and that the public be told the truth. But whenever a fresh case erupted, the church said it was an aberration, an isolated example, one bad apple. Or media bashing by an anti-Catholic press.

Dioceses lapsed into a pattern of denial and deception. They treated sexual pathology as a moral failure and crime as a religious matter. The Roman Catholic Church is a stern hierarchy that has always kept its deliberations secret, policed itself and issued orders from the top. An obedient priest moves up in power by keeping his head down, winning rewards for bureaucratic skills and strict orthodoxy. When Cardinals are created, they take a vow before the Pope to "keep in confidence anything that, if revealed, would cause a scandal or harm to the church." When it came to sex abuse, the Vatican essentially told bishops, You're on your own. But if saving the church from scandal was literally a cardinal virtue, then the bishops of America's 194 dioceses who had direct responsibility for priestly misconduct would make it their first principle. Better by far never to let the public know.

If allegations came to diocese attention, the bishop, a power unto himself who often operated as if ordination gave him a share of the Pope's infallibility, acted as prosecutor, judge, sentencer. Desperate to retain even sinful men, as the number of priests shrank alarmingly, and ever putting the image of the church first, bishops refined the system. Convince the family that publicity would harm the faith. Don't report to the police; don't warn the parish. Treat the priest with confession, time out at a discreet rehab center and Christian forgiveness; then let him resume duties at a new parish, the same way they dealt with whisky priests' alcoholism. For years the bishops believed, or made themselves believe, pedophilia could be "cured," until the serial molestations and multiple victims and repeat offenders proved it wasn't so. Only the most recalcitrant recidivists were eventually "laicized" — forced to give up their priestly vocation — long after they had done their worst. And if a victim finally sued, the strategy was to admit nothing, buy silence, settle out of court and seal the deal with a confidentiality contract. The church, said Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk who testified as an expert for plaintiffs in priest-abuse cases, "took a very defensive position, rather than proactive."

It is hard to remember in this age of confession, but 30, 20, even 10 years ago, children kept silent about sexual molestation. By and large they were ignorant, scared, guilty and sure no one would believe them. "I don't know that I identified it [as abuse] then," Chris Dixon, 40, told Time. He came forward only this month to detail two-decades-old allegations against Bishop Anthony O'Connell, of Palm Beach, Fla., who resigned a few days later: "Why would anyone believe me? I thought my parents would blame me."

Devout families — and predator priests frequently chose their victims from the most ardent parishioners — had been taught for generations to exalt, respect and trust priests. Who could imagine dear Father Tim — who came to dinner, played with the kids, counseled mom, acted like a dad — would do something so sinful? Doubting the priest would cost you your spiritual security. When Ralph Sidaway told his mother roughly 65 years ago that a parish priest had molested him, "she beat the crap out of him, because you don't say that about priests," says Sheldon Stevens, a Florida lawyer who handled a case lodged by Ralph's adult son Kevin, who says he was molested by the Rev. Rocco D'Angelo as a child. The church knew it and used it to dissuade people from pressing complaints.

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