When I hear some news, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The Vatican announced recently, somewhat in defense of the Inquisition, that it killed only 1.8% of of it's prisoners of conscience or accused witches. There is kind of an asterisk that reduces the percentage in that the Church largely excludes figures from the Spanish Inquisition which it notices, mostly belatedly I assume, was an independent operation. 'Take that, Trotsky,' I guess since the communist figures are worse.

"Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, who was at the news conference where the study was presented, said that the lessons of history never come to an end.

Acknowledging the past was all the more relevant given the continued use of torture in the 21st Century, most notably by US troops against prisoners held in Iraq, he said" which just goes to show that things haven't really changed too much. Reality testing and humility are both still optional in princes of the Church. Perhaps the suggested defensiveness of the cardinal relates to being associated with a trespass, Church language for psychosexual aggression. When the Church had control of things, its prelates may have felt that the existence of the targets of its Inquisition implied some agreement with their trespass which is why we had the Inquisition to begin with.