There was an Australian commission investigating the catholic church quite a few years ago, and it gave rise to prosecutions for crimes going back decades.

The courts were full of this stuff for months, with countless hours of testimony on the most heinous shit, most of it done to children because of course they’re the easiest to abuse, and that’s just the stuff that could be prosecuted. A huge amount of the investigations wouldn’t have enough evidence or even resources to convict so it would have to be dropped. The cases usually had a whole raft of complainants detailing a systematic pattern of abuse from some specific clergyman or other.

These people knew, for decades, that they could get away with just about anything and they would be shielded by the church. Why would the church act like this? Presumably because this localised investigation into crimes committed in a wealthy western country pales in comparison to the scale of crimes they commit globally, and the leadership doesn’t want any kind of precedent of justice to exist.