ROME (ITALY)
Crux
Dec 18, 2019
By John L. Allen Jr.
Tuesday’s news that Pope Francis essentially has abolished the requirement of pontifical secrecy for clerical sexual abuse cases means that robust cooperation with civil authorities is now a cornerstone not only of Church practice, but also Church law.
That’s an important distinction, because in the U.S. and some other parts of the Catholic world, the pontifical secret had already been reinterpreted by bishops and canon lawyers to permit such cooperation, seen as essential not merely in the interests of justice but also to prevent the Church from being exposed to both civil and criminal liability.
As a result, while Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna was, in a sense, right in calling Tuesday’s moves “epochal,” they won’t change much operationally in the American Church.
(The calculus is likely to be different in other parts of the world. For instance, Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of abuse at the hand of Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest, heralded Tuesday’s moves as a sea change for his country: “All these excuses of Chilean bishops and other parts of the world and the Curia, are over,” he said. “Today is an important day in transparency and justice for victims.”)
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