Vatican to introduce “zero tolerance” rules on clerical sexual abuse

By Hilary White

THE VATICAN’S Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) will produce a new set of protocols to be applied globally in dealing with sexual abuse of minors by clerics, according to a report from the Italian daily La Stampa. The paper said that the new rules will be modeled on the “zero tolerance” policy instituted by the U.S. bishops in 2002. Individual bishops must implement the new unified rules or resign.

Rome Reports, an English language daily news service based in Rome, said that the measures will include the automatic suspension of priests who are accused and the immediate reporting of accusations to the local law enforcement as well as the release of all documentation to civil authorities. The process of laicization [defrocking] for priests found to be guilty will be sped up, and the canonical statute of limitations, currently ten years after the alleged offense, will be abolished.

In addition, seminarians will undergo more rigorous psychological screening that will focus on their “affectivity and human maturity.”

Rome Reports says that the new rules are expected to be issued in the autumn, but may be released sooner due to the increasing number of allegations that are coming forward.

At the same time, in a statement issued today, Fr. Frederico Lombardi SJ, head of the Vatican's press office, appeared to suggest that a lack of diligence on the part of ecclesiastical authorities in applying existing canonical norms served to exacerbate the problem of sexual abuse.

“It has happened that a number of leaders of communities and institutions, through inexperience or unpreparedness, have not had a ready understanding of the protocols and criteria for intervention which could have helped them intervene decisively even when this was very difficult or painful for them, also because they were often surprised by the accusations,” he said.

Lombardi said ecclesiastical authorities must implement “decisively and truthfully, the correct procedures for the canonical judgment of the guilty, and for collaborating with the civil authorities in matters concerning their judicial and penal competencies, taking the specific norms and situations of the various countries into account.”

In his March letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict castigated Church authorities in Ireland for having “failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse.”

David Quinn, a regular columnist on religious affairs for the Irish Independent, writing for the Times on the Irish abuse scandals, has also said that while the Dublin archdiocese “disastrously” mishandled complaints of abuse, after the mid-1990s, cases were dealt with “properly” by applying existing norms of canon law.

--LifeSiteNews.com