To describe the covering up of clerical abuse in the Church as equivalent to omertà – the code by which Mafia bosses enforce the secrecy of their own criminal actions – is to use language as strong as any employed by the Church’s critics over the last 10 years. The fact that it comes from Mgr Charles Scicluna, Promoter of Justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the man with responsibility for dealing with the thousands of child-abuse cases reported to the Vatican, suggests that he and his colleagues have fully grasped the extent of the evil that infected the Church over this matter. Mafia bosses are, above all, interested in self-protection; they flee from justice. The failure of the Church in the past to ensure justice for the victims of child abuse has emerged as no less of a scandal than the abuse itself, made worse when it was the result of actions by persons in authority. It was a crime in canon law to show malicious or fraudulent negligence in the exercise of one’s duty, Mgr Scicluna said, indicating that bishops could be deposed from their sees for falling down in their duty in this respect.

He was speaking in Rome at the end of an international symposium, entitled “Towards Healing and Renewal”, sponsored by the Pontifical Gregorian University and attended by more than 100 bishops and 30 religious superiors. One abuse survivor who spoke called for bishops to be stripped of their posts if they failed to protect children from predatory paedophile priests. There are still notorious cases of high-level Church officials who have never faced justice for their errors of neglect.

The holding of the symposium, and the seriousness with which people such as Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, treated it, suggests that this department of the Vatican at least has caught up with the expectations of clergy and laity worldwide. They have at times been exasperated ...

Having vetoed proposals at the United Nations Security Council to address the profound humanitarian crisis in Syria, the onus is now on Russia and China to find an alternative way. A war of words broke out after the veto, with the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, calling it “a betrayal of the Syrian people” and the Chinese Government replying that he was being “extremely irresponsible”. But this actually increases the pressure on Russia and China to prove they can steer events in the direction of peace. If they now fail, they will have made themselves look callous, foolish and devious in the eyes of world opinion.

They may be proved foolish anyway, as recent developments suggest that President al-Assad himself has lost control of events, and he is Russia and China’s main pressure point. Whatever Russian-Chinese plan he signs up to, far from being a triumph of Russian-Chinese peacemaking diplomacy, it may prove to be worthless. The president has made promises many times before. Yet all the world can see indiscriminate attacks on civilians continuing long after the Syrian Government has announced cessations of military activity and withdrawals of troops. The country is not only heading towards civil war; it is heading towards anarchy.

The UN veto was tainted by self-interest, and looked like an attempt by the two powers to draw a line under the Libyan operation, refusing to give UN sanction to any more regime-changing military interventions disguised as humanitarian projects. China and Russia have always opposed the doctrine that the international community may, in extreme cases, intervene militarily to topple a government which mistreats its own population. They are obviously scared of accepting a precedent which could be used against them in years to come. The plan sponsored by the Arab League and the West did not actually sanction military intervention, yet ironically it made that more likely. Turkey, facing a major refugee ...

Once again the Vatican has responded to a whiff of scandal in a way that makes it worse. Throughout the long and agonising saga of clerical child abuse, there were voices saying that it was all “got up” by the media, some denying that there was any substance to it at all. Sadly, that is how the curial machinery has chosen to deal with recent allegations of financial rather than sexual irregu­larity, even ...

The announcement that the Queen has accepted advice to strip the knighthood from Fred Goodwin, the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, brings into focus two models – the old-fashioned but still admired sense of public duty that motivates the Queen, and the prevailing ethos of business and finance where all that matters is the bottom line. It was that which drove Mr Goodwin (as he now is) to take Britain’s ...

Self-determination has become a key principle of international affairs. So when the leader of the Scottish Nationalists insists on having a referendum on the break-up of the union with England established in 1707, it is taken for granted that the result would determine what actually happens. And this would be true even if the English and Welsh were not similarly consulted, though their interests would also be affected. ...

President Obama has made a serious mistake. He is demanding that Catholic hospitals must make contraceptives available to their staff as part of their health-care packages. The new rules are part of the health-service reforms, which are the greatest achievement of his presidency so far. He appears to have been taken in by the fact that most American Catholics do not have personal moral objections to contraception ...

The eight solicitors who wrote to The Times this week demanding a public inquiry into sexual abuse by members of the clergy may have weakened their case by overstating it. They say they have seen “clear evidence of cover-ups in some of our cases” involving the Catholic Church, which is undoubtedly – and scandalously – true. But they believe these are “the tip of the iceberg”, which ...

Ed Miliband and Mitt Romney could have a mutually sympathetic conversation about the difficulties of political opposition. Labour’s leader is coming under attack from his left – mainly leaders of the large ­public-sector trade union who accuse him of being too New Labour; the Republican front-runner’s main problems come from his right, who find him insufficiently illiberal.

The fact that ...

Britain’s welfare agencies have been both unanimous and vociferous in their opposition to the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill now before Parliament. The Government’s own commissioner for children’s rights, Dr Maggie Atkinson, has listed numerous threats to children’s well-being in the draft legislation, many of which have been echoed by other responsible voices.

Last autumn, ...