Pope Francis on Saturday updated a 2019 church law intended to hold church members accountable for covering up cases of sexual abuse, expanding it to cover lay Catholic leaders and reaffirming that vulnerable adults can also be victims of abuse when they cannot give their consent.
Francis reaffirmed and made permanent the temporary provisions of the 2019 law that were passed at a time of crisis for the Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy. That law had been praised at the time for establishing precise mechanisms to investigate complicit bishops and religious superiors, but its implementation has been uneven and abuse survivors have criticized the Vatican for its continued lack of transparency about cases.
The new rules follow other changes to the Catholic Church’s handling of abuse that have since been issued. Most significantly, they are expanded to cover leaders of Vatican-sanctioned associations headed by lay leaders, not just clergy. That is a response to the many cases that have come to light in recent years of lay leaders abusing their authority to sexually exploit people under their care or spiritual authority.
They also reaffirm that even adults can fall prey to predatory priests, such as nuns or seminarians who are dependent on their bishops or superiors. Ecclesiastical law previously considered that only adults who «usually» lack the use of reason can be considered victims along with minors.
The new law makes it clear that adults can become vulnerable to abuse even occasionally, depending on the situation. That’s significant given the resistance in the Vatican to expanding its abuse rules to cover adults.
It establishes that a vulnerable person is “any person in a state of illness, physical or mental deficiency, or deprivation of personal liberty that, in fact, even occasionally, limits their ability to understand or otherwise want or resist the crime.”
Francis originally set the standards in 2019 as a response to the latest chapter in the decades-long crisis, centering on a cover-up exposed by a Pennsylvania grand jury report and the scandal over then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Francisco himself was implicated in that wave of scandal, after he dismissed the complaints of victims of a notorious predator in Chile.
Realizing he was wrong, Francis ordered a full-scale review of Chile’s abuse record, summoned the presidents of all the world’s bishops’ conferences to Rome for a four-day summit on safeguarding, and put plans in motion. for a new law to retain senior churchmen. account for abuse and cover-up, and require all cases to be reported internally.
The law and its Saturday update contain explicit rules for investigating bishops accused of abuse or cover-up, a direct response to the McCarrick case, given that it was well known in Vatican circles and some US church circles that he slept with his seminarians. The law contained precise deadlines to initiate investigations if the complaints were well founded, and this has been maintained with some modifications.
The law also requires all church personnel to report allegations of clergy abuse internally, though it refrains from requiring police reporting. The new law expands whistleblower protections and reaffirms the need to protect the reputation of defendants.
Survivors have long complained that the Vatican for decades turned a blind eye to bishops and religious superiors covering up cases of abuse, moving predatory priests from parish to parish rather than reporting them to the police. The 2019 law attempted to respond to those allegations, but the victims blamed the Holy See for keeping the investigations and results secret.