Rules tightened for priest-abuse reports

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican told bishops around the world on Thursday they should report cases of clergy sex crimes to police even when not legally bound to do so, in its latest effort to compel church leaders to protect minors from predator priests.

The Vatican issued a long-awaited manual for bishops and religious superiors on conducting in-house investigations into allegations of rape and molestation of minors and vulnerable adults by priests. While the Vatican has had detailed canonical norms in place for two decades, the laws continue to be ignored by some bishops, particularly in the developing world and even Catholic strongholds like Poland.

While the manual doesn’t have the force of a new law, it goes beyond the current Vatican policy about cooperating with law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and police. That policy requires bishops and religious superiors to report allegations of sex crimes with minors only where local laws require it.

The manual says: “Even in cases where there is no explicit legal obligation to do so, the ecclesiastical authorities should make a report to the competent civil authorities if this is considered necessary to protect the person involved or other minors from the danger of further criminal acts.”

And it says church leaders must comply with “legitimate” subpoena requests.

The manual, issued in a half-dozen languages, appears aimed in part at depriving bishops and religious superiors of their frequent excuses not to carry out preliminary investigations into accused priests.

The manual states, for example, that anonymous allegations should not be dismissed outright, as they often are, and that even hearsay and social media posts can constitute the basis on which to launch a preliminary probe.

In addition, the manual says bishops should not ignore allegations just because they fall outside the church’s statute of

limitations, since the Vatican can at any time decide to waive the time limit.

The only justification for dismissing an allegation outright, the manual says, is if the bishop determines the “manifest impossibility of proceeding,” such as if the the priest wasn’t physically present when the alleged crimes took place.

The manual also makes clear that the type of crimes that fall under sexual abuse is “quite broad” and includes not only sexual relations but any physical contact for sexual gratification, including actions bishops frequently dismiss as mere “boundary violations.” The manual lists exhibitionism, masturbation, pornography production and “conversations and/or propositions of a sexual nature” that can occur through a variety of means of communication as crimes that must be investigated.

And it warns that bishops can themselves be prosecuted canonically for negligence if they fail to take allegations seriously and investigate them.

The manual was published by the Vatican office that investigates priestly sex crimes, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and was issued in Italian, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and German.

Its origins lie in Pope Francis’ 2019 sex abuse summit, in which the presidents of all the world’s bishops conferences came to the Vatican for a four-day tutorial on preventing abuse. Francis summoned them after he himself botched a notorious case of abuse and cover-up in Chile, and after he realized that many bishops around the world still didn’t understand or take seriously the depth of the abuse problem in the church. Information for this article was contributed by Maria Grazia Murru of The Associated Press.