[Joe's characterization of the Catholic Church]
Things can be really bad, and most people - even really good people - accept that's the way things are, and find it impossible to change things.

That's a description of a fundamentally rotten and destructive institution...

it doesn't do any good to try to figure out whom to blame when something is wrong - and I guess maybe that's what I feel is wrong with all these threads that condemn the Catholic Church for this and that

...where the blame lies not with individuals but with the institution itself. So those threads are right to condemn the Church rather than the thousands of sadists, paedophiles and thieves who have made use of it for their own ends.

The current compensation for Catholic priest child molestation victims in the United States is a million dollars. But each million dollars spent compensating a molestation victim, is a million dollars that can't be spent feeding the homeless. And a million-dollar damage settlement doesn't heal the victim of child molestation. And the million dollars is paid by people who had nothing to do with the crime, since the criminals are dead or penniless.

As you said yourself, the Vatican has vast financial resources (because Mussolini expropriated a large part of the wealth of Italy to hire them as ideological cops). They can afford it, and paying that sum communicates the important point that institutions can be punished for doing evil. That's something most victims will be very happy to see, regardless of what use they may be able to make of the money. An institution that murders and lies should not be seen to get away with it.

If the Church sincerely wants to see the homeless fed, they can throw their weight behind the struggle for a society where each receives according to their need. No institution has the dosh to feed the world as a charitable project.