(RNS) Unless Pope Benedict XVI does something fast, his pontificate will remain forever smeared by the muddy rolling sex scandal that has turned Catholic news into an international soap opera.

Here’s my two-pronged solution: Remove cover-up bishops, and restore women to ordained church service.

First, however, Benedict has to remove Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the 82-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals, who on Easter Sunday dismissed news coverage of the scandal as “petty gossip.” Such an insult to the billion Catholics whose faith is daily scandalized by new revelations — in the U.S., Germany, Belgium, Chile, Brazil, you name it — is reason enough to put Sodano out to pasture.

Then there is the fact that Sodano, as Vatican’s powerful Secretary of State during the critical period between 1990 and 2006, reportedly had a penchant for stopping sex-crime investigations. According to the National Catholic Reporter, in 1998 Sodano championed Marcial Maciel Degollado, the now deceased and disgraced pederast founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Only in recent weeks did the Vatican act on its investigations of Maciel and assume control of his now demoralized group of young priests.

Next, Benedict has to cut away any dead wood in his curial offices and dioceses around the world. People remember the fiasco in Boston, but the city’s former archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, still sits pretty as archpriest of Rome’s Basilica of Saint Mary Major.

The New York Times reports messes in San Francisco and Portland, Ore., but Cardinal William Levada — the former archbishop of both cities — still heads the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he seems to have ignored a particularly nasty case in Minnesota.

The pope cannot act soon enough. How can anyone believe any Catholic bishop who says “God is love” and “all are made in the image and likeness of God” when criminals and those who covered up their crimes are still around?

While Benedict is cleaning house, he should dust off his history books and look up women deacons.

Within the Catholic Church, there are three orders of the ordained: bishop, priest, and deacon. Benedict knows the diaconate is not the priesthood, and as an astute student of church history he surely knows there have been women deacons throughout history, in both the Eastern and Western churches. Benedict has said he wants to include women in governance and ministry. Now is his chance.

Now comprising about 36,000 (mostly married) men, the restored diaconate has been a huge success, expanding the church’s service and providing real ministry to real people. Ordained deacons can — and do — preach at Sunday Mass, so if you need a native-speaker of whatever tongue, you’re likely to find a deacon somewhere who can fit the bill. That’s good news in the U.S., which is home to about 43 percent of Catholic deacons and fewer and fewer ordained priests.

No church statements about priestly celibacy outrank ancient council documents that allowed women deacons, but you won’t hear that from the likes of Sodano and Benedict’s curia.

Neither will you hear the real story of Pentecost, which marks the birth of the church, when it’s celebrated this year on May 23.

Fifty days after Easter, Christians celebrate the feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended as a great wind upon Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem. The whole crowd of apostles — Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James — were there praying.

But you’d be hard-pressed to hear who else was there; Acts 1:12-14 is rarely read. But those apostles “joined … in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”

Will Benedict let the wind blow where it will, removing the dust and dirt, and bringing in a new-old idea to get more women in church leadership? It is time for a rebirth of the church. Otherwise, Benedict is bound to be remembered as the sex-scandal pope.

(Phyllis Zagano is visiting professor of theology and religion at St. Leo University in Florida and author of several books in Catholic studies. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University in New York.)