Oh, the Pope has given WAY more than a sentence to this! He has spoken out about it quite a lot, you just don't hear it cause the media doesn't report it.
Believe me, there have been several Bishops who have probably had their butts chewed out over this, but they are the arbiter in their Dioceses. The Vatican doesn't own property in the US, the Bishops, through their Dioceses do, so the legal responsibility goes through them.
As bad as it is, this problem isn't as large as the media makes it out to be. If you just heard the news, you'd be under the impression that millions of kids are being raped and abused at the hands of thousands of Catholic priests. That is simply NOT the case! There are no more instances of this abuse in the Catholic Church than there are in any other large institutions. I daresay, there's more of a problem within the public school structure of the US, but the media has decided to bring all it's attention onto the Church because it has a beef with her. The most liberal papers got all over this like white on rice cause they sensed an opportunity to try to destroy the Church's credibility in speaking out on other moral matters. I don't believe it has done irreperable harm, but it certainly didn't help.
The Pope HAS acted by 'retiring' several Bishops who needed to go, and by appointing new ones who will be willing to get rid of the problem priests, but the nature of Ordination itself makes the problem more difficult. Holy Orders is a Sacrament, and cannot be tossed aside lightly. It is like the Sacrament of Matrimony. It can only be annulled (declared never to have been) when it can be shown that one of the parties didn't intend to follow through on the vows made. If the priest were ordained, and it could be shown that it was NEVER his intention to be chaste, then his Ordination can be annulled. In other cases, when he violates his vows in an egregious manner, and shows no intention of returning to them, he can be laicized. In both cases, he is no longer associated with the Church, and is on his own.
There's another thing to remember, when considering all these cases of abuse. At any time, the abused kids parents, and the civil authorities, when made aware of the abuse, could have filed charges against these men. In some cases, the police and DA's decided NOT to press charges cause they were friends with the priest. In the case of Geoghan and Shanley in Boston, they were big Democrat supporters, and the DA's didn't want to rock that boat. There is a LOT of blame to go around in the cases that have made headlines. A lot of it has to do with the way people used to view priests, as being up on some sort of pedestal. That is particularly true up here in the Northeast. I grew up in MS, and never had that notion. I have always respected priests and religious, but not to the point where I though they could do NO wrong. They are all human, after all.