Vatican: Pope's Letter to Ireland to release Saturday noon (7am ET, 1100GMT), preceded by 11am briefing....

In the meanwhile, as a baseline -- and considering how much has changed since the lines were first delivered -- it's worth recalling B16's "Four Points" on "dealing effectively" with abuse revelations in the church, given in his ad limina speech to the Irish bishops in October 2006:

In the exercise of your pastoral ministry, you have had to respond in recent years to many heart-rending cases of sexual abuse of minors. These are all the more tragic when the abuser is a cleric. The wounds caused by such acts run deep, and it is an urgent task to rebuild confidence and trust where these have been damaged. In your continuing efforts to deal effectively with this problem, it is important to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again, to ensure that the principles of justice are fully respected and, above all, to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes. In this way, the Church in Ireland will grow stronger and be ever more capable of giving witness to the redemptive power of the Cross of Christ. I pray that by the grace of the Holy Spirit, this time of purification will enable all God’s people in Ireland to "maintain and perfect in their lives that holiness which they have received from God."

-30-