Maybe even “clear it up” as he did in issuing the only thing close to an apology for the Inquisitions, etc., in which papal-sanctioned torture was ambiguously blamed on “some of our brethren” and “the sinfulness of her children,” “they,”
“...we cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions.” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20000312_pardon_en.html
Hence it is appropriate that, as the Second Millennium of Christianity draws to a close, the Church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal. - http://www.cin.org/jp2ency/tertmill.html
Note that in RC theology, the church is pure and faultless, but members sin, yet their is no church without its members, and it is spotless because its members are only those that are washed, sanctified and justified by true faith, a faith that follows its Lord and Savior though it is not the works that saves them.
And when Daniel “apologized, it was “our,” not they:
“O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us. “ (Daniel 9:16)