LATIN AMERICA
GlobalPost
Will Carless on Oct 7, 2015
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A recent GlobalPost investigation found that Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children in the United States and Europe were able to escape accountability by transferring to South America, where they continue to work as priests.
While the abuse crisis has led to more stringent scrutiny of priests in the United States and Europe, in less developed parts of the world, media and law enforcement investigations of priests are relatively rare. Advocates for church sex abuse survivors say problem priests are taking advantage of this by transferring to remote locations in the developing world, to secure impunity and ensure they can continue working for the church.
Among the questions raised by our investigation were:
* How were those priests able to relocate, despite public allegations against them? And,
* To what extent does the Vatican monitor these movements?
According to experts in church law, known as Canon Law, the official process is simple and clear-cut. But as GlobalPost and others have found, the official process isn’t always followed.
Here are three steps to understanding how priest transfers work in the Catholic Church.
1. Relocation depends on whether priests belong to a diocese or a religious order
Every Catholic priest on Earth falls into one of these two categories.
Diocesan priests are geographically organized. They work for an ecclesiastical district known as a diocese, if it’s overseen by a bishop, or an archdiocese (led by an archbishop). They were either “ordained” (given their holy orders) at that specific diocese, or they transferred there and were “incardinated” there (more on this in a minute.)
Religious order priests, in contrast, work for a brotherhood that follows a specific religious philosophy, like the Franciscans or the Dominicans. Franciscans, for example, concentrate on helping the poor.
Religious orders, of which there are hundreds, are often scattered around the globe.
Patrick Wall, a victim’s advocate and former priest who wrote a book on the Catholic sex abuse crisis, estimates that 60 percent of Catholic priests are diocesan and 40 percent belong to religious orders.
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