Pope Francis expands 2019 sexual abuse law

Lay leaders covered under new provisions

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.

With the update, Francis made permanent temporary provisions that were passed in 2019 in a moment of crisis for the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy. The law was praised at the time for laying out mechanisms to investigate complicit bishops and religious superiors, though it amounted to bishops policing fellow bishops without any requirement that civil law enforcement be told.

But implementation has been uneven, and abuse survivors have criticized the Vatican for a continued lack of transparency about the cases. Their advocates said a wholesale overhaul was necessary, not just Saturday’s minor modifications.

“The Catholic people were promised that (the law) would be ‘revolutionary,’ a watershed event forholding 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.

The new rules conform to other changes in the Catholic Church’s handling of abuse that were issued in the past four years. They are extended to cover leaders of Vatican-approved associations headed by laymen and women, not just clerics.

The expansion 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 spiritual care or authority, most recently the L’arche federation of Jean Vanier.

The update also reaffirms that adults such as nuns or seminarians who are dependent on their bishops or superiors can be victims of abuse. Church law had long held that only adults who “habitually” lack the use of reason could be considered victims in the same sense as minors.

“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 (vulnerable adults), then you must intervene to defend their dignity and liberty.”

Francis set out the norms as a response to the decades of cover-up exposed by the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report and the scandal over then-cardinal Theodore Mccarrick, who was defrocked for abusing adults and minors. Francis himself was implicated in that wave of the scandal after he dismissed allegations by victims of a notorious predator in Chile.

Alessandra Tarantino The Associated Press Pope Francis delivers his speech on Saturday during an audience with pilgrims from Rho diocese in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican.