VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
La Croix International [Montrouge Cedex, France]
November 28, 2024
By Matthieu Lasserre
In a letter published November 25, Cardinal Victor Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced the creation of a working group aimed at defining “spiritual abuse” as a crime to combat “false mysticism.”
The Vatican aims to strengthen its tools against spiritual abuse. Through a letter dated November 22 and released three days later, Cardinal Victor Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced the establishment of a working group to define “spiritual abuse” and codify it as a crime in canon law.
Currently, abuses of conscience and trust are treated as aggravating circumstances in other canonical offenses. However, the prefect of the dicastery seeks to “codify” spiritual abuse as a distinct crime. “False mysticism appears in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s regulations in a very specific context: that of issues related to spirituality and alleged supernatural phenomena,” Cardinal Fernández wrote in the letter, which was signed by Pope Francis.
Norms on apparitions
The Argentine prelate refers to the dicastery’s regulations, which address “problems and behaviors related to the discipline of the faith, such as cases of pseudo-mysticism, alleged apparitions, visions, and messages attributed to supernatural origins.”
“False mysticism,” he continued, “refers to spiritual propositions that harm the harmony of the Catholic understanding of God and our relationship with the Lord.” While canon law does not currently provide a precise definition of spiritual abuse, the term is sometimes used by canon lawyers “in a sense closely tied to offenses of abuse,” noted the former Archbishop of La Plata.
In May, the Vatican issued new guidelines for the recognition of supernatural apparitions and mystical experiences. Since then, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has made several recommendations, denouncing fraud in some cases. For example, one case involved a purported visionary from Trevignano Romano, near Rome, who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary multiplying gnocchi.
Crime of spiritual abuse
To prevent the abuses that may arise from such “false mysticism,” the Vatican document stated that “the use of alleged supernatural experiences or recognized mystical elements as a means or pretext to exert control over individuals or commit abuse must be considered a particularly grave moral offense.”
“This consideration allows the situation described here to be evaluated as an aggravating circumstance if it occurs in conjunction with other crimes,” Cardinal Fernández added in his November letter. “It is possible to characterize a crime of ‘spiritual abuse,’ avoiding the overly broad and ambiguous term ‘false mysticism.'”
Working group to define the crime
Archbishop Filippo Iannone, prefect of the Pontifical Commission for Legislative Texts, will chair the working group tasked with outlining this crime. Its members will include individuals from both this commission and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The group is instructed to “fulfill its mandate as swiftly as possible.”