To his great credit, Pope Francis went beyond his predecessor's apology and accepted personal responsibility last week for the Roman Catholic Church's complicity in the sexual abuse of children by priests.

Francis also spoke of "the sanctions that must be imposed," giving rise to speculation about what he might be prepared to do about it.

The pope's unscripted remarks to a French Catholic children's rights organization raise the question and hope that the church, at last, might have a leader who will not flinch from the extirpation of its institutional sin.

To do so requires calling to account those bishops and "princes of the church," its cardinals, who protected pedophile priests - and, not incidentally, the church's wealth - by keeping their crimes against children secret, sometimes justifying their silence as an effort to protect victims' privacy.

Thin cover, indeed, when the quiet transfer of errant priests from parish to parish, with no restrictions on their work with little children and youth, essentially allowed clerics to go and sin again, and again - that is to say, commit crimes again and again, without ever facing trial in a court of law.

Shocking allegations about repeat offenders exploded into a national scandal in 2002, when The Boston Globe gave Pultizer Prize-winning coverage to how the church hierarchy systematically covered up sexual abuse by some Catholic priests.

The impact was felt across the country as victims elsewhere gained courage to speak out to a rapt public.

The resulting crisis in the U.S. church grew, in turn, to an international scandal with revelations of abuse the church had covered up that had touched the lives of tens of thousands of children worldwide.

There since has been no shortage of apologies.

Before retiring as pope, Benedict XVI met with victims in the U.S. to apologize. Later, he wrote to victims in Ireland, expressing "shame and remorse" and criticizing Ireland's bishops for "grave errors of judgment and failures of leadership." But he never acknowledged the systemic rot that allowed it to go unchecked.

Benedict defrocked nearly 400 priests over claims of child abuse in 2011 and 2012. But he did not discipline any bishop found to be complicit by covering up such crimes. Nor, to date, has Francis.

He appointed a commission to advise on best practices for fighting sexual abuse, though, offering hope that the worldwide church might be open to change.

Then, at the end of the week leading into Holy Week, he said, apparently from the heart, "We don't want to take a step back in dealing with this problem and the sanctions that must be imposed. On the contrary, I think we must even be stronger!"

Perhaps Francis is ready to push the church another step along an agonizingly slow and painful road to transparency, accountability and redemption.

Can he if he tries? The Vatican is filled with men deeply vested in power as well as tradition.

But he is, after all, the pope.