Do criminal cardinal Mahony and other church leaders who shielded pedophile priests belong in prison?

Yes. Accessories after the fact.

Technically speaking, they probably do, but by now, no real purpose would be served. We're talking about elderly priests and primates all the way around, because most of these cases involve abuse going back decades and priests who were educated and trained under old systems that no longer exist.

Moreover, the truth is that the Catholic Church wasn't the only place filled with people who really didn't "get it". For years, decades and centuries, children who tried to tell teachers, parents, anyone, that Uncle so-and-so or Grandpa or that nice neighbor down the street wasn't exactly keeping his hands to himself -- those children were often called disgusting liars by their parents, or else they were told just not to go near the abuser, so that no one called the police, and he was left free to continue to abuse other children. Society in general didn't start to get serious about this problem until relatively recently. It's been going on for a long, long time. How many of us should go to prison?

Finally, most of the money paid out hasn't been to "silence" people but is rather compensation paid to victims who have NOT been silent. Had victims not started coming forward and loudly describing their experiences, we wouldn't know anything about the abusive priests, and relatively little money would have been paid. Catholic dioceses have been going broke to compensate all of the victims who have spoken up. The sums that might have been paid to victims who didn't go public would have been much, much smaller.

Yes and the person at the head of the organisation under whose watch it happened

In response to the usual rubbish posted from the Roman Catholics erroneously suggesting they are no worse than anyone else

"The percentage of paedophile priests is 20 to 200 times higher than the incidence found in the secular population,"

"To hand a child over to a clergyman means to expose him/her to a risk which is at least twenty times higher than that of handing him/her over to a teacher, to a neighbour, to a family friend,"

"In regard to what the Church wants you to believe; i.e., that the risk is the same, you only have to analyze the figures to realize that it is not true."

http://cityofangels8.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/new-st...

In short it's time the Roman Catholics looked at their own actions rather than pointing fingers at anyone and everyone else

Clear conspiracy, so yes. Too bad they can't nail them under the Ricco laws.

Yes they do, they only belong in hell if they don't repent sincerely and ask God for forgivness of their sins.