VATICAN CITY — 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.
The new rules conform to other changes in the Catholic Church’s handling of abuse that were issued in the last four years. Most significantly, they are extended to cover leaders of Vatican-approved associations headed by laymen and women, not just clerics. The 2019 law expanded that definition and it is retained in the update, making clear that adults can be rendered vulnerable to abuse as situations present themselves. The inclusion is significant given resistance in the Vatican to the #MeToo pressure to recognize rank and file parishioners who are abused during spiritual direction by a priest as possible victims.
Francis originally set out the norms as a response to the decades of cover-up exposed by a Pennsylvania grand jury report and the scandal over then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was eventually defrocked for abusing adults as well as minors. Francis himself was implicated in that wave of the scandal, after he dismissed claims by victims of a notorious predator in Chile.
The law also mandates all church personnel to report allegations of clergy abuse in-house, though it doesn't mandate reporting of abuse by lay leaders and refrains from requiring any reporting to police. The new law expands whistleblower protections and reaffirms the presumption of innocence and the need to protect the reputation of those accused.
“Maybe upwards of two-thirds of the bishops' conferences around the world haven’t really had the type of capacity-building and resources to implement process this in any meaningful way," the Rev. Andrew Small, the secretary of the pope's child protection advisory board, said.
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