Long Time Coming: Vatican Announces A New Sexual Abuse Law

A REVIEW of existing Catholic Church laws regarding clerical abuse, led by Archbishop Filippo Iannone, above, has led the Church to explicitly criminalise sexual abuse of adults by priests.

According to this report, it comes after 14 years of deliberation for updating the Vatican’s legal system.

The new provisions, published on today (Tuesday) in the revised criminal law section of the Vatican’s Code of Canon Law also say that laypeople who hold church office can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes.

The two changes aim to address major shortcomings in the church’s handling of sexual abuse by recognising that adults can be victimised by priests and that laypeople in church offices, such as school principals, can be punished for abusing minors as well as adults.

Church law will also be changed to criminalise the grooming of minors or vulnerable adults by priests to compel them to engage in pornography.

In addition, the new law, which is set to take effect on December 8, makes clear that bishops and religious superiors can be held responsible for omissions or negligence in failing to properly investigate and sanction priests involved in abuse.

A bishop can be removed from office for “culpable negligence” or if he fails to report sex crimes to church authorities. However, there is no punishment foreseen in the church law for failing to report such crimes to police.

Lawyers and bishops have long-complained that the old Code, set out in 1983, was inadequate for dealing with sexual abuse of minors as it required time-consuming trials, while victims and their advocates have criticised the amount of discretion given to bishops.

Iannone, the Vatican official who led the department that oversaw the project, said that there had been “a climate of excessive slack in the interpretation of penal law”, with bishops sometimes putting mercy before justice.

According to the new law, priests who engage in sexual acts with anyone – not just a minor or someone who lacks the use of reason – can be defrocked if they used “force, threats or abuse of his authority” to engage in sexual acts.

Monsignor Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Vatican’s legal office, said the new version would cover any rank-and-file member of the church who is a victim of a priest who abused his authority.

Under the new law, priests who engage in sexual acts with anyone – not just a minor or someone who lacks the use of reason – can be defrocked if they used “force, threats or abuse of his authority” to engage in sexual acts.

AP adds that the Vatican has long considered any sexual relations between a priest and an adult as sinful but consensual, believing that adults are able to offer or refuse consent purely by the nature of their age.

But amid the #MeToo movement and scandals of seminarians and nuns being sexually abused by their superiors, the Vatican has come to realise that adults can be victimised, if there is a power imbalance in the relationship.

That dynamic was most clearly recognised in the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, above, the former archbishop of Washington. Even though the Vatican knew for years he had sex with his seminarians, McCarrick was only put on trial after someone came forward saying McCarrick had abused him as a youth. Francis eventually defrocked McCarrick in 2019.

That provision is contained in a section detailing violations of the priest’s obligation to remain celibate. Another section of the law concerns priestly crimes against the dignity of others, including sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.

The law doesn’t explicitly define which adults are covered, saying only an adult who “habitually has an imperfect use of reason” or for “whom the law recognizes equal protection.”

Arrieta said the Vatican chose not to define precisely who is covered but noted that the Vatican previously defined vulnerable adults as those who even occasionally are unable to understand or consent because of an physical or mental deficiency or are deprived of their personal liberty.

The Rev Davide Cito, a canon lawyer at the Pontifical Holy Cross University, said the broadness of the law “allows it to protect many people” who might not necessarily fall under the strict definition of “vulnerable” but are nevertheless deserving of protection.

The new addressing sex crimes committed by laypeople who hold church offices, such as the founders of lay religious movements or even parish accountants and administrators. It says laypeople can be punished if they abuse their authority to engage in sexual or financial crimes.

Since these laypeople can’t be defrocked, penalties include losing their jobs, paying fines or being removed from their communities.

But Kurt Martens, a canon lawyer and professor at Catholic University of America, wondered how the church would enforce the payment of fines, suggesting the penalty might be an example of “wishful thinking” on the Vatican’s part.

You can have the most perfect legislation and the lousiest enforcement. Unlike civil authorities, what is the power of the church to enforce penalties she ultimately chooses to enforce?

The need for such a lay-focused provision was made clear in the scandal involving Luis Figari, the lay founder of the Peru-based Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a conservative movement that has 20,000 members and chapters throughout South America and the US.

An independent investigation concluded Figari was a paranoid narcissist obsessed with sex and watching his underlings endure pain and humiliation. But the Vatican and local church dithered for years on how to sanction him since he wasn’t a priest and couldn’t be defrocked.

Ultimately the Vatican decided to remove him from Peru and isolate him from the community.