The first priest that the PR Pope excommunicated, in 2013, earned it by speaking out for women to be ordained (he also supported marriage equality, but the ordaining women thing seems to be the main issue).

In Melbourne. The same city where George Pell molested children and protected other molesters. George Pell, a child who the Pope appointed to the Council of Cardinal Advisers.

Child molestation isn't a lesser sin to the church. It's a non-sin.

So according to the head of the catholic church, slagging off the pope is worse than fucking children?

One is just cause for excommunication according to the rules. Excommunication is a very specific punishment for very specific religious things.

Stealing communion wine could technically earn you an excommunication depending on how it was done and what was done with the wine.

The rules behind excommunication are practically ancient at this point but they weren't there to prevent all sins, just be punishment for specific things that were threatening to the absolute shitshow that the organization itself was a long ass time ago.

The fact that it's still a shitshow as an organization, albeit a slightly different KIND of shitshow has no bearing on this situation in particular.

Let's be fair, though. All kiddy diddlers are in the depths of iniquity and should have long since been addressed under what's said in scripture and held to account on that regardless of any talk of excommunication.

Clergy should have been removed for choosing to actively live in sin and then punished according to the law.

The important part is to be loyal. Same as when Elizabeth I broke with Rome the people punished for being chatolic was not charged with heresy, but treason

Not to defend the pope and his lack of prosecution of these pedophiles, but you have to remember that the rule of a leader is never absolute. A leader still has to answer to either the lay people, the nobles/elites, or both. Or else a leader will have to face a rebellion in some form or another. That being said, the problem is that Pope Francis has to go against a significant number of pedophiles and other ultraconservative priests. The Vatican is a hotbed of political intrigue as much as in the royal courts, congress or parliaments. There has been a talk of conservative discontent on Pope Francis for many years now; many of whom adore the pope's more conservative predecessor, Benedict XVI. I mean, how else would a pope get elected by its own elites other than to also engage with politics? It's not different to your everyday office politics or government.

We go high, they go low. Taking the moral high ground against these people just end us losing the battle.