Oh, there's wealth, all right - but most of it doesn't belong to the Vatican, or to dioceses - and the property that does belong to the Vatican or dioceses, is often historic buildings that are expensive to maintain and unlikely to be razed, or local parish buildings that are in use by the people who paid for them.

I don't know how it is in Ireland; but most Catholic dioceses in the US, lost the excess property they had in paying off the sexual abuse reparations.

But the "vast" wealth of the Church is mostly in priceless art and architecture. The Pieta would bring a pretty price, but does anyone really believe it should be sold to a private collector?

More than that, this problem isn't something money can fix - and bankrupting the Catholic Church isn't going to fix the problem, either. Child abuse and molestation are far deeper problems than that. Putting a lid on the Catholic Church isn't going to end the problem, or even reduce it significantly.

And, as been stated above, the worst of the problems occurred prior to 1970 (although the coverups have continued to the present time). One good aspect of all this, is that Catholics may have learned not to trust their bishops so completely. Those of us who worked for the church, already knew that many bishops were often far more concerned with power and money, than they were with the spiritual welfare of their "flocks." In the United States, I'd say 25 percent of bishops are really good, and 25 percent really bad. The rest are timid, plodding, unimaginative bureaucrats.

-Joe-