Benedict XVI’s decision to break his silence cannot have been made lightly. At the time of his resignation, the former pope announced his intention to withdraw and remain “hidden from the world”. His few public comments since then have carefully skirted current debates. Now he has done what it seems he intended never to do. His essay on sex abuse is a polemical intervention in today’s most heated Catholic controversy. It names names and lays blame. Benedict must have felt he was saying something absolutely necessary, something that was going unsaid.