The “>liberal path that has made him a bit of a media darling. (“>AP report, that Benedict defrocked almost 400 priests in 2011 and 2012 over sexual abuse allegations. “>AP article notes that the spike in defrocked priests occurred a year after the Vatican double the statute of limitations (canonical law, I assume), encouraging earlier victims to come forward. That suggests the allegations were recent and some of the abuse was quite old.
But it also seems quite possible that some of the complaints against the now-defrocked priests had been kicking around for years and were finally resolved in 2011 and 2012.
