FRANCE
National Catholic Reporter
Kieran Tapsell | May. 4, 2016 Examining the Crisis
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon, France, — who last week admitted to “errors in managing … certain priests” — is being investigated by French police for failing to report in 2007 and 2009 allegations of sexual abuse by his priests, in contravention of French law. There have been calls for his resignation or sacking.
Central to every coherent legal system based on the rule of law is that people can only be punished for disobeying the law, not for obeying it. The calls for Barbarin’s resignation or sacking raise the issue of how he breached canon law.
In failing to report the allegations, Barbarin was complying with the pontifical secret imposed by Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela of Pope St John Paul II which applies Article 1(4) of the 1974 Instruction of Pope Paul VI, Secreta Continere. It has no exceptions for reporting allegations of child sexual abuse to the civil authorities. In 2002, the Holy See granted to the United States a dispensation from the pontifical secret with a direction to report where there were civil reporting laws, but that direction was not extended to the rest of the world until 2010. Whatever Barbarin’s culpability under French civil law, canon law in 2007 and 2009 forbade him from reporting the allegations to the police.
In 2001, Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux, France, was given a three-month suspended jail sentence for failing to inform authorities about a serial paedophile priest. Pican is now bishop emeritus, retiring in 2010 at the mandatory age of 75. In September 2001, Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, at the time the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, wrote to Pican congratulating him for the cover up. He said that he was sending a copy of his letter to all the bishops of the world, holding up Pican as a model to follow. He also said his congratulatory letter was approved by Pope St John Paul II. Similar statements condemning the reporting of paedophile priests to the police by bishops were made in 2002 by high ranking prelates in the Roman Curia and Church leaders in France, Germany, Belgium and Honduras.
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