VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News) [Hong Kong]
November 12, 2025
By Kieran Tapsell
Leadership has to come from the top if the Church wishes to change culture of secrecy at its lower levels
In an address to the National Safeguarding Conference held in the Philippines from Oct. 20-24, Pope Leo stated that “there can be no tolerance for any form of abuse in the Church.”
At the same time, he had a meeting with board members of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA Global), which has been advocating a “zero tolerance” policy for child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
The pope acknowledged that there was some “resistance in some parts of the world” to zero tolerance. What he did not mention was that most of the resistance comes from his own dicasteries.
The usual meaning of “zero tolerance” is the imposition of the law’s maximum penalty for any breach, irrespective of the circumstances. The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, in its 2017 Final Report, stated that the appropriate punishment for clergy found guilty of child sexual abuse is dismissal from the priesthood, and for non-ordained religious, expulsion from the religious institute.
A slightly watered-down form of zero tolerance has been canon law for the United States since 2002. It requires permanent removal from ministry in every case. That has been the definition of zero tolerance adopted by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in its 2024 Universal Guidelines for bishops’ conference protocols. These guidelines do not impose zero tolerance, even with that definition, despite its claim to do so. The guidelines recognise that under canon law, the Dicastery for the Congregation of the Faith ultimately decides the appropriate punishment, not individual bishops or bishops’ conferences.
There are many impositions of zero tolerance in the Church’s 1983 Code of Canon Law. There is automatic excommunication for assaulting the pope (Canon 1370), apostasy, heresy and schism (Canon 1364), procuring an abortion (Canon 1379), throwing away the Holy Eucharist (Canon 1382), absolving one’s accomplice for a sexual sin (Canon 1384), attempting to ordain a woman (Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela 2010 Art 5, 1°) and directly violating the seal of confession (Canon 1386). Canon 694 §1 provides that members of religious institutes are “ipso facto dismissed” if they marry or attempt to marry. Secular clergy who wish to marry in the Church are also required to be “laicised,” the canonical term for dismissal. No exceptions. That’s zero tolerance.
For reasons which are difficult to understand, the Holy See will not apply that same standard to child sexual abuse, other than in the United States, with its permanent removal from ministry. In appearing before the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child in 2014, the Holy See produced statistics showing that only 848 of 3,400 priests found to have sexually abused children had been dismissed. The others had been dealt with by unspecified “disciplinary measures.” We have no idea what these disciplinary measures were or what the statistics are for the last 11 years.
In the same address, Pope Leo encouraged bishops to have “essential policies and practices that ensure transparency in dealing with cases.” Yet, the real lack of transparency exists inside his own Vatican Dicasteries.
The Australian Royal Commission’s recommendation 16.16 was that the Holy See publish its disciplinary decisions and the reasons for them. The 2021 French independent CIASE (Commission Independante sur les Abus Sexuels dans l’Eglise) Report made the same recommendation.
The Holy See’s 2020 response to the Australian Royal Commission was that the abolition of the pontifical secret by Pope Francis in 2019 now allowed case law publication and that it would publish such decisions on a case-by-case basis. The Holy See mentioned the need to protect the reputations of “all persons” involved in canonical proceedings. “All persons” includes convicted perpetrators. Protecting reputations and privacy, even of perpetrators, can easily be done by anonymization, where necessary, as is done routinely in civil Family Court cases. It is a practice followed by the Holy See in its publication of marriage annulment case law in canon law journals.
In the last six years, since the abolition of the pontifical secret, the only disciplinary decisions that have been published have been those where the press has already reported on the case, such as with Cardinal McCarrick. Decisions of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on penalties for clergy sexual abusers are given to the relevant bishop and are kept in the diocesan secret archive. In cases involving convictions and sentences, Canon 489 requires bishops to destroy the evidence after ten years or the death of the priest, with only a brief summary of the sentence retained. Not even national bishops’ conferences receive copies of the decisions. Canon 489 ensures that the Vatican will have evidence of child sexual abuse by clergy that is not available to be subpoenaed by a civil court or commission of inquiry in the place where the abuse occurred.
On Oct. 16, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which advises the pope on child sexual abuse matters, published its Second Annual Report. It mentions transparency 33 times with reference to the failings of bishops in different parts of the world. There is not one word about the lack of transparency in Pope Leo’s Dicasteries, other than a brief mention of the failure to give reasons for bishops’ resignations.
The loudest voices calling for the publication of disciplinary decisions and their reasons have come from prominent canon lawyers: Charles Scicluna, John Beal, Kurt Martens, Justin Glyn, Miriam Wijlens, and from Neville Owen, a former judge of the Supreme Court of Western Australia and a current member of the Pontifical Commission. Canon lawyers need these decisions when giving advice, preparing cases and acting as judges. As Kurt Martens said at a conference in 2023: “This lack of systematic publication of the jurisprudence of the highest courts in the Church is unworthy of a true legal system.”
The Second Annual Report of the Pontifical Commission also examined dioceses in 22 countries and their responses to compliance with any observations of the United Nations Committee for the Rights of the Child for that country. Nowhere in the report is there any comment on the failure of the Holy See to comply with its obligations under the Convention to report to the Committee every five years. The Holy See was one of the first to ratify this Convention in 1990. The last report by the Holy See was in 2012. If the Holy See does not comply with the Convention for the Rights of the Child, there seems little point in the Pontifical Commission criticizing bishops who do not comply.
The election of Pope Leo, a prominent canon lawyer, looked like a positive sign for more transparency, given that the leaders of his profession have been most vocal in calling for it. Sadly, nothing so far has happened. If the Church wishes to change the culture of secrecy in the lower levels of the Church, set out in detail in the Pontifical Commission’s Second Report, leadership has to come from the top. The ball is in Pope Leo’s court, and it has been there since his election. Like Louis XIV, Leo XIV is an absolute monarch. He can change canon law and Vatican practice with the stroke of his pen.
*Kieran Tapsell is a retired civil lawyer and the author of ‘Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse’ (Second Edition 2024), and was a member of the canon law panel before the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.