Stefano Rellandini / Reuters

Pope Francis waves as he leads the weekly general audience in Saint Peter's Square, at the Vatican on April 3.

Pope Francis ordered the Vatican this week to act "decisively" in protecting children from sexual abuse and punishing predator priests, but his brief statement contained few specifics on how to stem the crisis that has roiled the Catholic Church for a decade.

The new pontiff directed the Vatican office known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to "continue the line" on the anti-abuse policies set by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.

Observers say that to restore the church's credibility and ensure the safety of children worldwide, Francis will have to back up his words with actions. Here they offer some recommendations:

Heads should roll
The pope should demote or discipline a few bishops who were found to have covered up misdeeds, said David Clohessy, executive director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, noting that Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City has held onto his diocese even though he was convicted of a misdemeanor for failing to report a pedophile priest.

Although others said the pope was just being polite, Clohessy was incensed that he greeted scandal-scarred Cardinal Bernard Law during the traditional visit to St. Mary Major the day after his election. "Actions speak louder than words," he said.

Gabriel Bouys / AFP - Getty Images

David Clohessy, left, of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests with outreach director Barbara Dorris.

Name names
"The church needs to be open about the names of offenders who have been found to be abusers," said Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI official and ex-director of the Office of Child Protection at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "If you're a diocese and you know that these 10 clergy members abused children, you should put those on the website."

Church officials may be rightly concerned about the danger of naming a priest who is falsely accused. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center, said that to build trust that no coverup is going on, victims' groups should be included in the process of deciding which allegations aren't strong enough to make public.

Meet with victims
The pope has been accused of giving the cold shoulder to abuse victims while he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. Whether that's true or not, he needs to give victims plenty of face time now, Reese said. 

"He has to listen to their stories, reach out to them and apologize -- and do it again and again, and the sooner the better," Reese said. "You don't understand it until you've sat down and talked to these victims. When you hear their stories, it just tears you apart."

Nancy Wiechec / Catholic News Service via AP file

Rev. Thomas Reese

World Youth Day in Brazil in July would be the perfect moment for Francis to sit down and hear those stories first-hand.

Get new advisers
Francis should make sure his inner circle includes people who understand the gravity of the crisis. Thomas Groome, chair of the Department of Religious Education at Boston College, said he hopes the pope recruits Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who had to clean up Law's mess, to assist him in Rome.

The pontiff is less likely to act on Groome's other suggestion: making women, grandmothers in particular, cardinals. He noted that lay cardinals existed centuries ago and that wise old Catholic women with children and grandchildren might bring a new perspective on youth-protection to a church run by childless men.

Crunch the numbers
A decade ago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a survey of every diocese in the country that collected data about the extent of the sex-abuse problem. Even though victims' groups claimed there was under-reporting, McChesney said, "people in the church were stunned at the numbers" -- more than 4,000 priests accused of molesting children.

But predatory priests are not just an American problem. The Vatican should undertake an international survey that would help it identify other regions where abuse is happening, McChesney said.

Shake up the bureaucracy
The Vatican should create a new office in charge of the protection of childen, separate from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which would continue to investigate individual abuse claims, McChesney said.

"They have enough on their plate," she said of the CDF, which needs to plow through a large backlog of complaints against priests.

The new office, McChesney said, would serve as a sort of professional board of directors -- helping dioceses across the globe replicate anti-abuse programs that have been successful in the U.S. and making sure the world's bishops and religious communities are complying with Vatican guidelines.

Benedict ordered every diocese in the world to establish policies and procedures to deal with abuse. Two years later, many dioceses have not followed through.

Related:

Pope: Stopping sexual abuse key to church's credibility

New pope packages lure pilgrim tourists

Pope Francis urges unity in first Easter Sunday address

Tony Gentile / Reuters

Pope Francis personally called a Buenos Aires kiosk to cancel his newspaper delivery.

He's the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics around the globe, but Pope Francis isn't too busy or important to cancel his newspaper delivery.

The new pontiff — known as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio until his election — shocked an Argentinian newspaper seller when he phoned earlier this week to say he wouldn't be needing the papers any more.

"Hi Daniel, it's Cardinal Jorge," he told Daniel Del Regno, according to the Catholic News Agency.

Del Regno, whose father owned the Buenos Aires newspaper kiosk, thought it was a joke.

"Seriously, it's Jorge Bergoglio," the pope continued. "I'm calling you from Rome."

Del Regno said once he realized one of the most influential men in the world really was calling to make sure no more papers were delivered to his apartment, he was "in shock."

"I broke down in tears and didn’t know what to say,” Del Regno told the Argentinean newspaper La Nacion. "He thanked me for delivering the paper all this time and sent best wishes to my family."

"I told him to take care and that I would miss him," Del Regno added. "I asked him if there would ever be the chance to see him here again. He said that for the time being that would be very difficult, but that he would always be with us."

His father, Luis Del Regno, said he delivered the papers six days a week but on Sundays, the cardinal would come by in person and chat before getting on a bus.

Once a month, he would even return the 30 rubber bands that were put around the papers to stop them from blowing away.

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio was famous for rejecting the trappings of his lofty position. Every parish priest had his home phone number and he set aside time for them to call each morning.

The younger Del Regno said that when Bergoglio left for the conclave last month, he asked about his chances of being elected pope.

"He answered me, 'That is too hot to touch. See you in 20 days, keep delivering the paper.' And the rest is, well, history," he said.

Related:

Pope's personal touch with crowds a 'nightmare' for security, expert says

Video: Pope Francis wrote frankly about celibacy struggles

Osservatore Romano via AFP - Getty Images

Pope Francis greeting the faithful after a March 17 mass at Santa Anna church. He plunged into crowds pushing against barricades outside a Vatican gate as security men and Swiss Guards stood nervously by.

Pope Francis' love of getting up close and personal with his flock is giving his security detail a bit of agita.

The new pontiff, who used to take a packed bus or subway to work as a cardinal in Buenos Aires, does not seem content to sit in his Popemobile and wave to crowds from afar.

His willingness to suddenly wade into a sea of people presents new challenges for the Swiss Guard and other security forces.

"We are worried if there is more contact with people, because that means there's a greater possibility something can happen," Cpl. Urs Breitenmoser of the Swiss Guard told the Catholic News Service.

Breintenmoser said the pope's style "is perfectly fine" and that the security teams are nimble enough to react to his spontaneity, though it's clear those responsible for his safety are nervous.

The head of the Vatican police looked concerned when the pope greeted some 200 people after a March 17 mass at the Church of St. Anne in Vatican City and then headed right for the throngs at the barricades outside.

Courtesy Sergio Rubin via AFP - Getty Images

Before he was pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio took mass transit in Buenos Aires.

"I'm sure it's a nightmare for them," Claude Moniquet a security expert who heads the Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center and has written about protecting heads of state, told NBC News.

"The point of security plans is to limit the moments with direct contact, so this is a hole in security."

Vatican security breaches are rare but frightening.

Pope John Paul II was shot and gravely wounded by Turkish national Mehmet Ali Agca in St. Peter's Square in 1981. In 2007, a German man tried to climb onto Pope Benedict XVI's open vehicle as he tooled around the square, and a 25-year-old woman with psychiatric problems tried to tackle Benedict during Christmas Eve Mass in 2009.

Moniquet said that Francis' penchant for crowd-pleasing leaves him less vulnerable to a terrorist attack than to an unstable lone wolf who blends into the audience.

The Swiss Guard and the Vatican's gendarme corps can plead with the pope to keep his distance but it probably won't work, he said.

"It's impossible to prevent a VIP like this from doing what he wants," Moniquet said. "If you have a clear and imminent threat, you can tell him no. If not, he does what he wants."

And he said a pope may be harder to sway than a prime minister or a vice president.

"If the people believes his mission is to go to the people, what can you say?" he said. "Maybe he believes God will protect him or maybe he believes if he dies, it's the will of God. He would be difficult to convince."

Related:

Pope Francis spoke of being dazzled by girl

35 years waiting for smoke: A witness to Vatican history

Maurizio Brambatti / EPA

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet is among the non-Europeans who are considered possible papal candidates.

It's been 35 years since an Italian pope has ruled the Catholic Church, and some Vatican watchers believe the conclave that starts Tuesday could be the first to elect a pontiff from outside Europe.

While the Italians control a quarter of the votes, recent scandals suggest that they might be too beset by deep divisions to unite early around one candidate from their home turf.

The church's influence in Europe is on the wane, and its biggest area of growth is in sub-Saharan Africa, leading some to suggest that it might be time to look beyond the traditional countries for a pope with global appeal.

"The Catholic Church has moved far beyond the notion that any one nationality has a peculiar aptitude for the Office of Peter," said NBC News Vatican analyst George Weigel, author of "Evangelical Catholicism."

"The secondary reason why this is a wide-open field from which a non-European candidate may emerge is that the Catholic Church is in serious difficulty throughout western Europe and in parts of central and eastern Europe.

"Even stalwart Poland is beginning to show some troubling signs of the influence of secularism."

Catholic Center for Media via AP

Cardinal Robert Sarah is from Guinea but also has a strong Vatican background.

A number of non-Europeans keep showing up on Vaticanologists' lists of papabili, those cardinals thought to have the right stuff: Marc Ouellet of Canada, Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, Odilo Pedro Scherer of Brazil, Robert Sarah of Guinea.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, an analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, said that when insiders talk about crossing the European borders, the conversation often ends up in Africa, "where the church is growing, where it's dynamic and where it's a success in vocations."

"The church looks good in Africa," he said. "The counter-argument is: The church in Africa is doing fine. We need someone to deal with the church in Europe, North America and Latin America, where it's in trouble."

Reese said he's "not sure that geography is the answer" to the Vatican's problems, but at the same time he sees the appeal of a pope from afar.

"It would certainly send a message that this is a global church, this is not a European church any more," he said.

With just three days to go before the conclave, there is no indication that the cardinals are rallying around any one candidate, including the Italians.

Weigel said many of the top non-European candidates have impressive Roman credentials:

Cardinal Marc Ouellet: The former archbishop of Quebec City, he heads the Congregation for Bishops, has worked in two Vatican departments and has taught at the Lateran University. He also has Latin American experience, having taught there, and has confronted an "aggressively secular environment" in Quebec. But some will question whether the scholarly pastor can reform the curia, the administrative apparatus of the Vatican.

Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer: The archbishop of Sao Paolo, Brazil, worked for the conclave's senior cardinal, Giovanni Battista Re, at the Congregation of Bishops under Pope John Paul II. Now he has the top job in the country with the most Catholics. He lacks charisma, though, and many cardinals feel they need someone with personality.

Cardinal Robert Sarah: Appointed archbishop of Conakry, Guinea, when he was just 34, Sarah now heads the pontifical council Cor Unum, which is the Vatican's parallel to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Weigel noted, however, that Rome has often not been as friendly as it could have been to African church leaders.

Franco Origlia / Getty Images

Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has lots of energy and charisma but might be seen as too young.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan: The archbishop of New York's personality could be a double-edged sword. "No member of the College of Cardinals lights up a room like [Dolan]," Weigel said, but skeptics could find him too effervescent. Plus, there is a longstanding prejudice against so-called "superpower popes."

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle: The passion and emotion of Manila's top Catholic could be attractive to electors looking beyond Italy for a candidate. His youth -- he's just 56 -- could go against him. "He could be pope for 40 years. If that's the case, he better be a great one," Reese said.

Other geographic outliers who have been mentioned and might get some votes in early balloting include Malcolm Ranjith of Sri Lanka, Thomas Collins of Toronto, Sean O'Malley of Boston and Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires.

An oft-mentioned cardinal, Peter Turkson of Ghana, is favored in the Italian press, which Weigel said historically means his candidacy is over even before voting starts.

Reese said regardless of how many worthy candidates there are, he wouldn't bet on a pontiff from another continent.

"The odds are against it when more than half the College of Cardinals is from Europe," he said. "They always begin by looking at the Italians."

Related:

'It takes as long as it takes': How the next pope will be chosen, step by secret step

Exposing Vatican secrets a 'dangerous' mission, says Vatileaks journalist

Riots, revenge and royal rigging: A history of controversial conclaves

Will Catholics embrace change? The view from one parish in Rome

A meeting with the red-clad “princes of the church.” A 10-minute helicopter ride to Castel Gandolfo. A quick wave from the balcony to throngs in a candlelit square.

That’s the script for Pope Benedict XVI’s final hours as spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics before his resignation becomes official at 8 p.m. Thursday -- ending an often rocky eight-year tenure and launching the church into a potentially contentious search for his replacement.

His farewell address has already happened – a speech Wednesday morning before a cheering crowd of more than 100,000 in front of St. Peter’s, where he acknowledged moments of great joy and difficulty and asked followers to pray for him in his retirement.

The spotlight will remain on Benedict, however, for at least another day before attention turns to the highly ritualized conclave that will choose his successor.

Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela (3rd L) reacts while attending the last general audience of Pope Benedict XVI.

At 11 a.m. Thursday, Italian time, he is scheduled to meet the cardinals that have rushed to Rome for the historic event. Each will have the chance to say a few parting words to him, but a major speech is not expected.

The personal goodbyes will continue as he leaves the Apostolic Palace before 5 p.m. and is driven to the helipad, where Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, will see him off.

The 85-year-old pope knows how to fly a helicopter but presumably will rely on a pilot from the 13^th Squadron of the Italian Air Force for the jaunt to the hilltop town where he will live in his summer residence for a few months while a monastery in the Vatican Gardens is prepared for him.

Town priests are planning a prayer vigil in Castel Gandolfo to begin a few hours before Benedict’s arrival, and he is likely to bestow a brief greeting on the thousands crammed into the town square, clutching rosaries and candles.

Once he leaves Rome, there will be only a few more hours in his papacy, which officially ends at the stroke of 8 p.m. Thursday. From that moment on, he will be known as pope emeritus, and aides say a life of quiet reflection will commence.

“I think we’ll probably catch some glimpses of him walking in the garden,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke told NBC’s TODAY. “He’s not the kind of guy who is going on a book tour.”

At the Vatican, the Swiss Guards will go off duty – and the cardinals will be officially called back to work the next day with a formal announcement of what’s called the sede vacante, Latin for "the seat being vacant."

A Vatican spokesman told the Catholic News Service the college will probably not meet over the weekend but could gather the following Monday for informal talks to set a date for the conclave and begin talking about priorities for 266th pope.

Under old church law, the conclave couldn’t start until March 15, but an amendment this week will allow the cardinals to push up the date as along as all 115 electors are in place. There were supposed to be 117, but one is too sick to attend and another recused himself after being accused of inappropriate behavior with priests.

And, of course, the Vatican guesthouse where the cardinals will stay during the conclave must be swept for listening devices before they can move in for the duration.

The length of the conclave — with its four secret ballots a day, cast in the Sistine Chapel — is anyone's guess; it took just two days to elect Benedict and three to choose his predecessor, John Paul II.

Vatican watchers say there is no clear front-runner and Benedict's legacy will loom large as they look to the future.

An introverted theologian, he is credited with pushing the "new evangelization" and repairing rifts with Jews but faulted for not taking stronger action as a sex-abuse scandal tarnished the church's reputation and letting the Vatican bureaucracy run amok.

He alluded to the crises during Wednesday's address, saying he had often felt like "St. Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of ​​Galilee."

"The Lord has given us many days of sunshine and gentle breeze, days in which the catch has been abundant," he said. "[But] there have been times when the seas were rough and the wind against us, as in the whole history of the Church it has ever been — and the Lord seemed to sleep."

Slideshow: Pope Benedict XVI's departure

Gabriel Bouys / AFP - Getty Images

The pope delivers his final audience in St. Peter's Square as he prepares to stand down.

Launch slideshow

Related:

Pope Benedict tells cheering crowd: I am not abandoning the church

Papal historian: Cardinals likely to choose an 'extrovert'

'Amateur hour': Vatican conclave drama is one for the history books, experts say

A lame-duck pope. A secret dossier. Rumors of a gay cabal. A cardinal accused of "inappropriate" behavior.

The Vatican is in an uproar, and church scholars say there hasn't been this much drama surrounding a conclave since 1800, when Pope Pius VI died while being held prisoner by Napoleon.

One Vatican watcher says you have to go back to 1730 — when Pope Benedict XIII's right-hand man fled Rome in disguise amid allegations of corruption — to find a conclave buffeted by this much scandal.

"This is not a healthy situation for any kind of institution," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on the Catholic Church at Georgetown University.

"It looks like amateur hour."

The conclave that will begin next month to choose Pope Benedict XVI's successor was always going to be an anomaly since it's been centuries since a sitting pontiff resigned.

The pope's historic Feb. 11 announcement has been overshadowed, however, by an extraordinary wave of revelations and accusations.

There were calls for cardinals accused of mishandling the sex-abuse crisis to abstain from voting. Then came a report that Britain's top cleric, Cardinal Keith O'Brien had been accused of bad behavior by priests, followed by his resignation on Monday.

Over the weekend, the Vatican had to deny an Italian newspaper report that Pope Benedict abdicated because an internal probe into the so-called Vatileaks mess had uncovered a network of gay priests who were being blackmailed.

Now comes the news that the pope will only let two people see the report on the document leaks — himself and his successor — despite calls for the Holy See to become more transparent.

Certainly, there have been other modern conclave controversies. 

The 1903 frontrunner, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, was vetoed by the emperor of Austria-Hungary, prompting a change in rules that allowed Catholic powers to knock down a candidate, said NBC News' Vatican expert, George Weigel.

Hulton Archive via Getty Images, file

Experts say there hasn't been this much pre-conclave uproar since a pope spirited out of Rome by Napoleon's forces died.

The conclave of 1914 had cardinals from Germany and France refusing to speak to each other, and the conclave of 1939 was held against the backdrop of a world hurtling toward war.

But today's level of pre-conclave tension hasn't been seen since 1800, two years after French forces invaded Rome and carried off the pope, several experts said.

"You had a dire situation where Pope Pius VI died effectively still a prisoner of the French. The cardinals could not gather in Rome for the election and had to meet on an island off Venice," said Matthew Bunson, general editor of the Catholic Almanac.

James Weiss, a professor of church history at Boston College, sees the conclave of 1730 more analogous, because it was complicated by internal problems, not outside forces.

He said that when Pope Benedict XIII died after six years, his corrupt and powerful aide, Cardinal Niccolo Coscia, was run out of town amid allegations he looted Vatican coffers.

"The population of Rome attacked his palace and he disguised himself a washerwoman and escaped," Weiss said. Coscia managed to negotiate a return for the conclave, however.

The commotion around the upcoming conclave could have serious consequences.

The Vatileaks intrigue would appear to undermine the cardinals of the Roman Curia, the administrators of the Vatican, while the sex-scandal bombshells weaken the outsiders from dioceses around the world, Reese said.

The various crises underscore some of the Vatican's weaknesses: a lack of transparency and an allergy to change in a rapidly modernizing world with a 24-hour news cycle and exploding social media.

"This is chickens coming home to roost," Weiss said.

Church historians say the clouds hovering over the conclave show why the next pope, unlike Benedict and John Paul II before him, must make Vatican house-cleaning a priority — from streamlining a web-like bureaucracy to standardizing archaic finances.

"It's always an issue when you have an institution that thinks in terms of centuries, to bring about reforms on a turn of a dime." Bunson said,

Bunson said he thinks those reforms are within reach with the right leader, but Weiss wondered if efforts to usher in a new era aren't already being undercut by the Vatican's announcement that the Vatileaks dossier will stay under wraps.

"That means the cardinals are going into the conclave blind, not knowing who among them may have stuffed their pockets or been part of gay sexual enclaves," he said. 

Reese said moving up the date of the conclave — which the pope announced Monday he would allow — could also be antithetical to change because it gives the cardinals less time to consider outsider candidates.

"This is the most important thing these cardinals will ever do," he said. "There’s no reason to rush."

NBC News' Erin McClam contributed to this report.

Related:

Pope says Vatileaks probe will stay secret

Britain's top Catholic cleric resigns amid allegations of inappropriate behavior

LA's Cardinal Mahony calls himself a scapegoat

Thibault Camus / AP

Young people in Paris march against same-sex marriage during a Nov. 18 protest organized by the fundamentalist Christian group Civitas Institute. French Muslims are joining the opposition.

PARIS — French Muslims have begun joining a mostly Catholic-led movement against same-sex marriage, widening opposition to the reform that the Socialist-led government is set to write into the law by June.

Fifty Muslim activists issued an open letter on Monday urging fellow Muslims to join a major Paris protest against the law on Sunday. That followed a similar appeal last Saturday by the influential Union of French Islamic Organizations, or UOIF.

Leaders of almost all main faiths in France have spoken out against the law but not called on their followers to march in Sunday's demonstration to avoid giving the opposition campaign an overly religious tone.

Gay-marriage opponents take to streets in France

President Francois Hollande and his government clashed with the Catholic Church last weekend, telling Catholic schools not to discuss the law with their pupils and urging state education officials to report anti-gay discussions at Catholic schools.

"We will protest on January 13 by joining a pluralist campaign to preserve the traditional framework of marriage," the Muslim activists' letter said. "We invite all French Muslims to turn out in large numbers."

The UOIF statement also urged Muslims to join the "March for All", the Paris protest against the reform the government has dubbed "Marriage for All".

"This bill, if it passes, will disrupt family and social structures and civil law dangerously and irreparably," it said.

The Muslim activist letter was signed by intellectuals, business leaders and leaders of several grassroots Muslim groups. It accused the government of using the marriage issue "to mask its ineffectiveness in the fight against unemployment".

More stories from Europe

France's 5-million-strong Muslim minority is Europe's biggest and Islam is the second largest faith after Catholicism.

The government has a comfortable majority in parliament to pass the bill. Opinion polls show almost 60 percent of the French support same-sex marriage but less that half want to let gay couples adopt children, which is part of the reform.

More world stories from NBC News:

• US drone strikes kill at least 18 Pakistani militants, sources tell NBC
• Assad gives defiant speech as Syrian rebels edge closer to Damascus
• Chavez ally re-elected, cementing position as possible caretaker president
• 'Nobody helped us for an hour,' Indian rape witness says
• 'Strong young woman': Taliban shooting victim Malala leaves hospital
• ANALYSIS: Is peace really in the air in Afghanistan?
• Drug-resistant malaria threatens deadly global 'nightmare'
• From alcohol to kites: An A to Z guide to the Islamic Republic of 'Banistan'

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook