It must be a futile plea to get you guys to see in the face of overwhelming evidence that something is wrong. Every single time hard evidence is presented, you cry "Anti-catholic bashing!" You do it every single time instead of admitting the catholic church might have a problem. The popes do not resign. They just simply do not resign, no matter what. Haven't resigned for 600 years. So, why now? A more in-depth reason must be the real motivating factor behind his resignation.
What's deficient with the stated reason?
That's the problem with Catholic bashers: they pull blanket declarations out their poop-chute, then declare everyone who doesn't assent to their "inspiration," deceived.
You (and a good handful of others on this thread) are a decade or so behind the news curve on this issue. The cases we hear about in America are decades old. In part this is because, as most Catholics know, priests today are immediately suspended if an accusation of abuse is made—whether credible or not. The investigation follows. A priest may wait for years to be vindicated of a false accusation. One effect is that young men today do not pursue vocations to the priesthood for the glamor. Today's generation of new priests is (thank God) sincere, tough-minded, conservative, and utterly normal.
Laymen today who work with children in the Catholic church have to go through certification, which involves very exacting rules and procedures designed to ensure the safety of children, including that no child is left alone with an adult.
Measured as a percentage of their numbers, Catholic priests have had a smaller proportion of accusations of child abuse than public school teachers and coaches have had of convictions. Catholic priests also are under-represented among abusers compared to Protestant clergy. (For the record, I believe abusers should be hanged, regardless of denomination.)
We have the spread of promiscuous, 1960s ideas to thank for most sexual abuse of both adults and children over the past decades. The irony is that it is mostly Leftists, such as atheists, aging hippies, and homosexuals, who look to attack the Catholic church for (allegedly) practicing the morality that Leftists themselves have long supported. Alinsky preached that Leftists should accuse their enemies of the sins they themselves commit, to pre-empt any criticism of the Left. This is also what Leftists, being childish, do by inclination.
Conservatives, who are used to de-coding anti-Christian media narratives, should not be confused by willfully ignorant and dishonest reporting in this area, either.