The new rules conform to changes in the Catholic Church’s handling of abuse that were issued in the last four years. Most significantly, they are extended to cover leaders of Vatican-approved associations headed by laymen and women, not just clerics.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Saturday updated a 2019 church law aimed at holding senior churchmen accountable for covering up sexual abuse cases, expanding it to cover lay Catholic leaders and reaffirming that vulnerable adults and not just children can be victims of abuse when they are unable to freely consent.
“The Catholic people were promised that would be ‘revolutionary,’ a watershed event for holding bishops accountable. But in four years, we’ve seen no significant housecleaning, no dramatic change,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an online resource that has identified 40 bishops investigated globally under the new protocols.
“This can be read as further manifestation of how the church cares for the frailest and weakest,” said Archbishop Filippo Iannone, prefect of the Vatican's legal office. “Anyone can be a victim, so there has to be justice. And if the victims are like these , then you must intervene to defend their dignity and liberty."
The 2019 law and its update Saturday contain explicit standards for investigating bishops and superiors, but entrusts other bishops to do the work. It also mandates all church personnel to report allegations of clergy abuse in-house, though it doesn't mandate reporting of abuse by lay leaders and refrains from requiring any reporting to police. The new law expands whistleblower protections and reaffirms the presumption of innocence of the accused.
“Maybe upwards of two-thirds of the bishops' conferences around the world haven’t really had the type of capacity-building and resources to implement process this in any meaningful way," said the Rev. Andrew Small, secretary of the pope's child protection advisory board.
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