Pope grants mercy for sex abusers

Victims’ advocates question Francis’ handling of cases

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of pedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church even to its worst offenders in ways that survivors of abuse and the pope’s own advisers question.

One case has come back to haunt him: An Italian priest who received the pope’s clemency was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for his sex crimes against children as young as 12. The Rev. Mauro Inzoli is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him.

The Inzoli case is one of several in which Francis overruled the advice of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced a sentence that called for the priest to be defrocked, two canon lawyers and a church official told The Associated Press. Instead, the priests were sentenced to penalties including a lifetime of penance and prayer and removal from public ministry.

In some cases, the priests or their high-ranking friends appealed to Francis for clemency by citing the pope’s own words about mercy in their petitions, the church official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the proceedings are confidential.

“With all this emphasis on mercy … he is creating the environment for such initiatives,” the church official said, adding that clemency petitions were rarely granted by Pope Benedict XVI, who launched a tough crackdown during his 2005-13 papacy and defrocked some 800 priests who raped and molested children.

At the same time, Francis also ordered three longtime staffers at the congregation dismissed, two of whom worked for the discipline section that handles sex abuse cases

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said they will be replaced and that staffing in the office, which has a yearslong backlog of cases, would be strengthened after Francis recently approved hiring more officials.

Burke said priests who abuse are permanently removed from ministry, but are not necessarily dismissed from the clerical state, the church term for laicization or defrocking.

St. John Paul II was long criticized for failing to respond to the abuse crisis, but he said in 2002 that “there is no place in the priesthood or religious life” for anyone who would harm the young.

Francis said he believed sex abusers suffer from a “disease” — a term used by defense lawyers to seek mitigating factors in canonical sentences.

Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor, expressed dismay that the congregation’s recommended penalties were being weakened.

“All who abuse have made a conscious decision to do so,” Collins told the AP. “Even those who are pedophiles, experts will tell you, are still responsible for their actions.”

Victim advocates have questioned Francis’ commitment to continuing Benedict’s tough line, given he had no experience dealing with abusive priests in his native Argentina.

Many canon lawyers argue that defrocking pedophiles can put society at greater risk because the church no longer exerts any control over them.

Collins said the church must also take into account the message that reduced sentences sends to both survivors and abusers.

“While mercy is important, justice for all parties is equally important,” Collins said in an email. “If there is seen to be any weakness about proper penalties, then it might well send the wrong message to those who would abuse.”