VATICAL CITY
Wall Street Journal
By FRANCIS X. ROCCA
June 10, 2015
ROME— Pope Francis ordered the establishment of a special court to try bishops for mishandling cases of clerical sex abuse, filling a widely decried gap in the Vatican’s approach to the problem.
The Vatican on Wednesday said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which already holds responsibility for cases of sex abuse by priests, will also “judge bishops with regard to crimes of the abuse of office when connected to the abuse of minors.”
While the Vatican has disciplined hundreds of priests for sex abuse since the outbreak of scandals in the early 2000s, no pope has explicitly punished a bishop for failing to prevent or punish abuse committed by other clergy.
A number of bishops accused of mishandling such cases have resigned under a provision of church law calling for them to step down on account of “ill health or some other grave cause.” A prominent recent case was that of Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City, Mo., who was convicted by a local court in 2012 for failing to report a priest who had produced child pornography. Bishop Finn resigned in April.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.