There's a significant difference.
The Vatican is now persecuting its own clergy under a new judicial arrangement. It can do this because it is a sovereign state. The Holy See is a government, and clergy who were involved in the sexual child abuse scandal should be shaking.
This is not the ignorant papacy of John Paul II or the too theologically-tangled-to-be-bothered reign of Benedict XVI. Francis is determined to jail these criminals and punish them with the same authority and institution that wielded out whippings during the days of the Inquisition.
While I don't know how successful Pope Francis will be or if his opposers in the church will let him go as far as I've read he has planned (and you might not be surprised that some would rather just continue to sweep things under the rug even if it means removing Francis from power), clergy that escape of even serve time under secular authorities may in addition have to face a Vatican tribunal and jail as well...and the Vatican can grab you where ever you may be!
Jehovah's Witnesses, despite believing they are representatives of God's Kingdom, are not a sovereign state. They cannot persecute or dish out punishment (and in some countries they are being investigated for holding judicial committees, as in some countries there can only be one judicial body for all). And they don't even have the guts to do anything because unlike Pope Francis who has already called out his own church and clergy with very tough language about this, JWs can't admit they did wrong.
Doing so for Witnesses is theological suicide because attempting to do so under their formula of hermeneutics, their paradigm would become a "house of cards," so to speak. Unlike Catholicism there is no autonomy or room for independent action. If one is wrong, they all are as the Watchtower equates truth with unity, and sees unity as being nothing less than uniformity.
I'm not holding my breath with the Catholic Church, however. It should have done something long ago. They just recently apologized for persecuting and killing members of my family before expelling them from their homes in the Iberian peninsula with the Alhambra Decree. Just the other day Austrian Catholics made a formal apology for its actions and inactions that led some of my relatives from Budapest and other Sephardic communities to death in Auschwitz. These are moves in the right direction, but they don't right many wrongs I am still living with due to these injustices that occurred before I was born.
But I would like to be surprised, and am actually pleased with the direction Francis is taking. But would the Witnesses do the same? Are you kidding? Did you see how they were patting themselves on their back for publishing articles about child abuse in Awake! issues no one has read in a generation as if this was proof they had no such filth in their ranks? You can't correct something you don't believe is broken.
