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My guess, for whatever it's worth, is that we're seeing a very new pope who has not spent a large amount of time in Rome or one of the other major power centers of the church, and who has not yet appointed his own people to key positions.

As a result, he has to trust those under him to make decisions which reflect his views. Sometimes mistakes happen. Sometimes “mistakes” are made deliberately by people who want to influence their superiors or those outside the leadership.

In the political and corporate world, new CEOs and new governors and new presidents often have this problem. The history of ecclesiastical organizations show they are not immune to the same issues.

I think we'll know more in time as we see who gets punished or promoted following this incident. But since the Roman Catholic Church is not a democracy and does not have to answer to constituents, that time may be a long time coming.

I do think the Pope is going to discover, if he has not already done so, that the world of the Vatican is not the same as the world of Peronist or post-Peronist Argentina. Pope Francis seems to have filled the pastoral role of a bishop in Argentina, bringing a message of mercy to a country where military strongmen have ruled for a very long time and often without much mercy. He made it possible to say, “there are two sides to this issue, and we cannot demonize the other side.”

That message may well have been needed in Argentina. One thing you **CANNOT** do without consequences in a Roman Catholic country is to persecute the senior clergy, and giving protection to political dissenters may have been the right role for an Argentine bishop.

Pope Benedict is now the one making the decisions, not merely the one trying to influence those in decisionmaking positions to have mercy. Time will tell how well he learns to handle the levers of power now that he's actually pulling them, not merely trying to convince a secular ruler to use them well.