My interest has always been with the state of canon law. But this report goes well beyond that, and raises all kinds of structural issues that the Church needs to confront if the time bombs of sexual abuse in the underdeveloped world are not to explode. Canon law can be changed with the stroke of the Pope’s pen, but the problems that the report raises are often deeply cultural and will need persistent pushing. The Church’s refusal to budge when the scandal broke out in the United States in 1985 shows that it will only move when forced to do so by institutions in secular society – courts, commissions of inquiry, the press and now universities. If scandal in the Church means the loss of faith, then the Church's failure to act can only mean more desertions from the pews even in countries where membership is growing.