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Maximum Leader = lawmaker, judge, jury, & executioner

Be very afraid if I get any of those gigs. :o)

Seriously though, if someone has committed a felony, he is a felon even before a trial, indictment or conviction (as you can read from the revelant Massuchessetts "aiding and abetting" statute that I've copied below). If you help some you know is a criminal escape justice, then you've become a criminal yourself.

Interestingly there is federal case law (I'm not licensed in Mass., so I don't know how the courts there have ruled) that even if the principal felon has been acquitted of the underlying felony, an accessory after the fact can still be convicted.

Chapter 274: Section 4. Accessories after fact; punishment; relationship as defence; cross-examination; impeachment.

Section 4. Whoever, after the commission of a felony, harbors, conceals, maintains or assists the principal felon or accessory before the fact, or gives such offender any other aid, knowing that he has committed a felony or has been accessory thereto before the fact, with intent that he shall avoid or escape detention, arrest, trial or punishment, shall be an accessory after the fact, and, except as otherwise provided, be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than seven years or in jail for not more than two and one half years or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars...

You must have missed the part about NO charges being filed and No prosecutor pressing a case, and victims agreeing/asking that the offense be kept quiet.

Helping someone keep quiet a serious misdeed that COULD be prosecuted but is NOT being prosecuted is no crime. While I am morally appalled at the bishops who made many serious mistakes - who knew the facts, I am not appalled at the pope, who did not know the gory details.

People in very high places are often purposefully NOT told sordid details so that they can stay above the fray. Apparently everyone thinks that the pope should have ordered the man sent to jail.

Blame whomever else you want to, but the pope is blameless here.