Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI rarely got credit for having turned the Vatican around on clergy sexual abuse, but as cardinal and pope, he pushed through revolutionary changes to church law to make it easier to defrock predator priests. He was the first pontiff to meet with abuse survivors. And he reversed his revered predecessor on the most egregious case of the 20th century Catholic Church, finally taking action against a serial abuser who was adored by St. John Paul II’s inner circle. Even so, much more needed to be done by the church hierarchy. In the years after Benedict’s 2013 resignation, the scandal he believed encompassed only a few mostly English-speaking countries had spread to all parts of the globe.