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	Vatican Approaches New Abuse Rules By Rachel Donadio New York Times July 6, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/world/europe/07vatican.html?_r=1 ROME — In an effort to rein in the sexual abuse crisis threatening the church, the Vatican is inching toward introducing changes to canon law to make it easier to discipline pedophile priests, Vatican officials say. The changes will codify into canon law exceptions that already allow the Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to defrock priests using faster administrative procedures rather than a full ecclesiastical trial. Few other details have leaked out, but several reports and Vatican officials suggest that there are limited technical changes. If true, critics and victims are likely to find them inadequate for the scope of the crisis, though they will mark the first doctrinal modification since the abuse crisis hit Europe this spring and the United States a decade ago. The changes are not expected to include adoption of the “zero tolerance” policy used by bishops in the United States and elsewhere, which remove a priest from ministry at the first credible accusation of abuse, as some victims’ groups and critics had hoped. But in the quiet battle raging deep inside Vatican City, they are likely to appear as a defeat for the many traditionalist members of the hierarchy who believe that anything short of a full canonical trial betrays the church’s trust in a priest and deprives him of due process. According to an article in The National Catholic Reporter on Tuesday, the changes are also expected to lengthen the statute of limitations in which abuse victims can come forward, to 20 years from 10 years, after the victim’s 18th birthday. Vatican officials say they will also identify child pornography as a serious offense to be handled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The changes would enshrine into universal law exceptions granted in 2003 by Pope John Paul II to a 2001 Vatican document governing abuse. That document immediately generated widespread confusion among bishops, who believed that it required full canonical trials, a response they deemed inadequate after the sexual abuse crisis that erupted in Boston in 2002. The Vatican hinted at the changes in April, when it published online for the first time guidelines it said it advised bishops to follow in handling abuse, including reporting all cases to the Vatican and to civil authorities in countries that require mandatory reporting of crimes. But those guidelines do not hold the force of law, and for years bishops have complained about confusion over how to handle abusive priests. Vatican officials say that Pope Benedict XVI signed the change in a meeting last Saturday with Cardinal William J. Levada, his successor as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but that the Vatican is sending the document to the world’s bishops before making it public. Officials say the changes are expected to be announced within the next two weeks.
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