The Pope gracing Canada with his presence for World Youth Day in mid-July stirs memories of an earlier visit by his holiness almost 20 years ago. One of my memories is of a photo of a transvestite holding a sign along one of the Pope’s parade routes. It read “Just Another Guy in a Dress.”

A second memory is of crowds lining the parade routes in St. John's, Newfoundland, to catch a glimpse of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church as he was chauffeured about in the Plexiglas-enclosed vehicle dubbed the Popemobile. Houses were freshly painted and the sun was shining. St. John's, a bastion of Irish Catholicism, genuflected.

The year was 1984. Brother Edward English and most of the other Irish Christian Brothers who had physically and sexually assaulted children at the Mt. Cashel Orphanage had slipped out of town a few years earlier, so they missed kissing the holiest of rings. However, Father Jim Hickey, one of the most aggressive sexual predators in the archdiocese of St. John's, was at the centre of the celebrations.

Hickey was the church’s Youth Director and, next to the archbishop, he was the most powerful priest in the archdiocese. I can still see a smiling Jim Hickey standing beside the Pope as thousands of children gathered around the infallible disciple of Christ on the shores of Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John's for a youth rally.

Hickey wasn’t the only sexual predator who met with the Pope during the visit. The pontiff, escorted by Father Jim Hickey, visited the fishing village of Flatrock and the Stations of the Cross carved into a granite cliff face behind St. Michael’s church. The parish priest at St. Michael’s was Father John Corrigan. Like Jim Hickey, Father Corrigan would be found guilty of sexually assaulting children.

In his defence, Corrigan’s lawyer said he was overworked, suffering from stress, and was drinking 26 ounces of alcohol a day. Today a visitor to the parking lot beside the wooden clapboard church will see white footprints painted on the asphalt celebrating the moment when the Pope walked there, alongside a child molester.

Since the Pope’s departure, 11 Christian Brothers from Mt. Cashel Orphanage have been charged, brought back to St. John's and convicted of scores of physical and sexual assaults. I’ve lost track of how many Catholic priests in the archdiocese of St. John's followed Jim Hickey and John Corrigan into court with well-paid lawyers, and out of court in handcuffs.

The archbishop of the day, Alphonsus Penny, initially said he never knew anything about Jim Hickey’s sexual assaults, but then the archbishop established an independent commission to inquire into the matter of priests sexually assaulting children and we learned that, indeed, the archbishop knew plenty. Recently, Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston did a similar flip-flop. First he denied having any knowledge of sexual misconduct by one of his priests and then he admitted that church records existed that proved otherwise.

Since the Pope’s visit in 1984, scores of children who are now grown-ups, almost all men who call themselves survivors, have gone to court seeking damages. Some have received compensation, but most are still waiting. In the case of the victims of Mt. Cashel, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador admitted it shared responsibility for the tragedy that occurred behind the stone walls of that Roman Catholic edifice, and the government paid compensation to some of the victims. The province is now trying to recover a portion of those payments from the Irish Christian Brothers religious order.

Has the church accepted responsibility for the injuries inflicted on the orphans in Mt. Cashel? You be the judge. In 1991, the Christian Brothers of Ireland in Canada (CBIC) knew a legal storm was breaking as the first of the lawsuits were filed. The finance committee of the CBIC took stock of the order’s assets. They concluded in a report to the order’s board of directors that the assets of the order were well in excess of $100 million.

Five years later the CBIC went to court and said it was bankrupt and it wanted the court to appoint a liquidator to dispose of the order’s assets and distribute the proceeds to the victims of Mt. Cashel. The value of those assets was $4.3 million. Somehow more than $96 million in assets disappeared.

The liquidator is still trying to get his hands on two valuable pieces of Vancouver real estate that were claimed as assets by CBIC long before the Mt. Cashel scandal broke. The Vancouver real estate consists of two private schools, Vancouver College and Sir Thomas More. In 1975, when the sexual predators at Mt. Cashel slipped out of town, one of the most heinous ones, Edward English, was sent to Sir Thomas More. Later, the man in charge of Mt. Cashel, Doug Kenny, was sent to Vancouver College and became the supervisor of the boys’ dormitory.

After the finance committee reported to the CBIC in 1991, the order decided that it really didn’t own the two schools. In spite of having a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in his favour, the liquidator still doesn’t have the keys to the schools. According to Geoff Budden, a St. John's lawyer representing Mt. Cashel victims in U.S. civil lawsuits, clerical defendants there have pursued the same strategy of divesting assets and playing what he calls “hardball” in court.

Catholic bishops in the U.S. may have held an emergency meeting, said they were sorry for abuse suffered at the hands of priests, and expressed compassion, but Geoff Budden’s clients are still waiting for compensation.

The Pope has a choice to make on World Youth Day. If he's silent on the issue of priests and members of religious orders sexually assaulting children, then he'll be accused of being either out of touch or uncaring. On the other hand, he can, and probably will, talk about mistakes, say the church understands the pain it has caused, express remorse and promise reform.