VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency
By Andrea Gagliarducci
Vatican City, Jan 23, 2015 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis completed the membership of the new Vatican body with responsibility for dealing with clerical sex abuse on Wednesday, marking a further step in providing adequate procedures to insure justice for all the victims.
The body is a specific office within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that will deal with ‘delicta graviora’, or ‘more grave crimes’. These are the most serious crimes in the Church, and most notably include offenses against morality: the sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric; or the acquisition, possession, or distribution of child pornography by a cleric.
The new office is established as a college of seven people, whose names were announced Jan. 21.
Bishop Charles Scicluna has been appointed president of the college. Now the Auxiliary Bishop of Malta, Bishop Scicluna served from 2002 to 2012 as Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – that is, as the Vatican’s public prosecutor – personally handling the sex abuses crises of 2002 and 2010 and carrying forward the ‘zero tolerance’ line wanted by St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI to tackle the issue.
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