The strange
disconnect between Pope Francis' words and actions about sex abuse
On his tour of the United States, Pope
Francis has forcefully reminded the world about the importance of looking after
the planet and the perils of climate change. His criticisms of the world
economic system and the plight of the poor are timely and welcome. There is
very little that Pope Francis can personally do about either of these things
except to do what he has done — warn and exhort.
But there is one thing that he can personally do
about child sexual abuse, and that is to change canon law by abolishing the
pontifical secret over allegations of the sexual abuse of children by clergy
and religious.
In an address to bishops in
Philadelphia, Pope Francis said: "The crimes and sins of sexual
abuse of minors cannot be kept secret any longer. I commit myself to the
zealous watchfulness of the church to protect minors, and I promise that all
those responsible will be held accountable."
The maintenance of
secrecy for these crimes is imposed by Article 25 of Pope John Paul II's motu proprio, Sacramentorum
Sanctitatis Tutela of 2001 and by Article 30 of its
revision by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, which impose the pontifical
secret on all allegations and proceedings relating to child sexual abuse by
clerics. The footnotes to Article 25 and Article 30 apply Article 1(4) of Pope
Paul VI's instruction, Secreta Continere,
which defines the pontifical secret as the church's highest form of secrecy,
and like the secret of the confessional, is a permanent silence. Since becoming
pope two and a half years ago, Pope Francis has made no attempt to change this
maintenance of secrecy, the very thing he condemned in Philadelphia.
Like Pope Benedict
XVI in his 2010 pastoral letter to the people of Ireland, Pope Francis ignored
the role of canon law in the cover up, and said, "I
deeply regret that some bishops failed in their responsibility to protect
children." There was not a word about the fact that in most cases such
bishops were complying with the pontifical secret under canon law, and its
requirement to try and cure the priest before any attempt was made to dismiss
him.
A dispensation to allow reporting to
the police where the civil law requires it was granted by the Holy See to the
United States in 2002 and to the rest of the world in 2010, but where there are
no such civil laws, the pontifical secret still applies. Very few countries
have comprehensive reporting laws.
Francis is the Bishop of Rome, but his
own Italian Bishops Conference, of which he is the primate, announced in 2014
that Italian bishops would not be reporting these crimes to the police because
Italian civil law under the 1929 Lateran Treaty with the dictator, Mussolini,
did not require them to do so.
On Jan. 31, 2014, the United Nations Committee on
the Rights of the Child requested the Holy See to abolish the pontifical secret
over allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy and to impose mandatory
reporting. On May 22, 2014, the United Nations Committee against Torture
requested the same thing.
On Sept. 26, 2014, The
Vatican responded and rejected these requests, stating that mandatory reporting
under canon law would interfere with the sovereignty of independent nations. If
that were true, the church should not even have a canon law that applies to
Catholics all over the world. Canon law only interferes with such sovereignty
when it requires Catholics to disobey the civil law. Where there is no conflict
between canon and civil law, canon law has no more effect on a nation's
sovereignty than the rules of golf. Mandatory reporting under canon law would
only interfere with national sovereignty if the civil law of a country
prohibited the reporting of child sexual abuse by clergy. No such country
exists.
On March 19, 2014,
Pope Francis said that Pope Benedict had supported "zero tolerance"
for clergy who sexually abused children. On May 26, 2014, he pledged to apply the same "zero tolerance" standard. But the
figures produced by the Holy See's representative at the United Nations,
Archbishop Tomasi, show that the Holy See's tolerance is not zero but 66 percent.
Less than one third of all priests against whom credible
allegations of sexual abuse of children have been made have been dismissed.
In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI dismissed
Fr. Mauro Inzoli, who was accused of abusing dozens of children over a 10-year
period.
In 2014, Pope Francis reinstated him and required him to live a life of
"prayer and penance", the same punishment that Pope Benedict XVI
handed out to the notorious Fr. Marcial Maciel. When Italian Magistrates asked
the Vatican to have access to the evidence submitted to Inzoli's canonical trial,
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith refused, stating, "The
procedures of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are of a canonical
nature and, as such, are not an object for the exchange of information with
civil magistrates." Pope Francis himself maintains the secrecy that this
week he condemned.
Father Inzoli |
Father Maciel - John Paul II's friend |
In matters of child sexual abuse, Pope
Francis has no constitution, no Congress, no Senate and no Supreme Court that
could restrain him from changing canon law. He has no obligation even to
consult anyone. He is the last of the absolute monarchs.
He can take out his
pen at breakfast, and write on his napkin an instruction to abolish the
pontifical secret in cases of child sexual abuse and to order mandatory
reporting everywhere. He can instruct it to be translated into Latin and to
have it published on the Acta Apostolicae Sedis.
It then becomes canon law.
On Jan. 21, 2014,
after the United Nations hearings, Thomas C. Fox, the publisher of this paper, wrote that Pope Francis "does
not understand the full magnitude of the related sex abuse issues, or, if he
does, is yet unwilling or incapable of responding to it."
One can only hope that Pope Francis
means what he says in his address in Philadelphia, but up to the present time,
there is a strange disconnect between what he says and what he, personally, has
done. Cardinal Francis George wrote in an article in 2003 that if you want to
change a damaging culture, you first have to change the laws which embody it.
The buck for maintaining secrecy over the sexual abuse of children within the
church truly stops with Pope Francis.
[Kieran Tapsell is
the author of Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican Secret and Child
Sexual Abuse (ATF Press 2014).]
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