Whether harm was inflicted on those who asked for release from Rome and were denied by St John Paul II is debatable.

Without access to each petition and the reasons therefore resolving it would, in fact, be impossible.

Every cleric in the Latin Rite understood on ordination that what he voluntarily agreed to precluded marriage, so at the very least he was not being denied anything to which he had a right.

In my experience clerics who petitioned for release from celibacy for the most have already gone too far down a road they should never have entered in the first place, which really precludes as a matter of character entrusting them with the care of souls again.