VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News) [Hong Kong]
May 7, 2026
By Kieran Tapsell
The current system of dealing with child sexual abuse cases breaches fundamental principles of coherent legal systems
The Second Vatican Council said that bishops should deal with their priests as “beloved sons.” In his 1992 Apostolic Exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis, Pope John Paul II said that priests owe their bishop “filial respect and obedience.”
The Catholic Catechism says that there is “an intimate sacramental brotherhood” between priests and their bishop. Cardinal Castrillón, former Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, said in 2010 that the bishop should not be expected to report a pedophile priest to the police because of their father/son relationship.
In a 2010 interview with The Tablet, the Vatican Prosecutor, Monsignor, now Archbishop Scicluna, said that the duty of a bishop to report one of his priests to the civil authorities for child sexual abuse was onerous because it was like reporting a son to the police.
The long-accepted practice in respectable legal systems is that such a relationship should exclude any bishop from being involved in any investigation, prosecution or trial for the canonical crime of child sexual abuse by one of his priests.
Yet, that is what canon law in most circumstances requires.
When an allegation of child sexual abuse against a priest is brought to the attention of the bishop, he is required under Canon 1717 to carry out a preliminary investigation. He can delegate the task to “another suitable person,” normally a canon lawyer.
Once that investigation is complete, he is required under Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela 2021 (“SST 2021”) to send the evidence to the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (“DDF”), which will tell him what to do. The DDF may deal with the matter itself, or it may refer it back to the bishop to conduct a trial.
Canon law provides for two ways in which a priest accused of child sexual abuse can be put on trial. The first is a judicial trial where the tribunal is made up of three judges, usually canon lawyers. The second is an administrative procedure conducted by the bishop with two assessors. The assessors can be clerics or laypersons (Canons 1424 and 127). The bishop is not obliged to follow their advice
Canon 1342 prohibited an administrative tribunal from imposing perpetual penalties, such as dismissal from the clerical state or permanent prohibition from ministry. However, in 2021, Pope Francis amended this to allow the DDF to authorise an administrative tribunal to impose those perpetual remedies. The DDF instructs bishops to carry out an administrative procedure in most cases.
This procedure has an inherent problem of conflict of interest.
The Holy See was aware of conflict-of-interest problems when it had to deal with complaints of sexual abuse by bishops. In Vos Estis Lux Mundi, Pope Francis required complaints of sexual abuse against a bishop to be referred for investigation to the metropolitan bishop, usually the bishop of the capital city of a state where the accused bishop resides. Art 13§6 provides that the “Metropolitan is required to act impartially and free of conflicts of interest,” and if he considers himself to have a conflict of interest, he is “obliged to recuse himself” and report the matter back to the competent Dicastery.
There is no equivalent in canon law that requires a bishop who has been instructed to carry out an administrative trial against one of his priests to recuse himself because of the father/son relationship. Art 20§1 of SST 2021 allows the bishop to appoint a delegate to conduct the trial, but there is no obligation on him to do so. The 2022 Vademecum of the DDF, explaining the procedure, says that the bishop can delegate the entire process, including the sentence, to a delegate or reserve the final decision to himself.
The French Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE), in its 2021 Final Report, strongly criticized the administrative procedure. It pointed out that there is no separation of powers in the canonical system. Like the pope for the world, the bishop exercises legislative, executive and judicial power for his own diocese. The commission commented:
“This position (as prosecutor and judge), which places him (the bishop) at the same time, in the role of “father” and of censor of the diocese’s clergy, appears, humanly speaking, untenable. From a more legal point of view, such a situation can also legitimately raise doubts about the bishop’s impartiality towards priests whom he has personally appointed and to whom he has entrusted a pastoral office.”
The French commission pointed out that it is open to the bishop to appoint canon lawyers from other dioceses to avoid these conflicts of interest, but “this decision remains optional and entirely up to the bishop.” It also accepted that sometimes the DDF instructs the bishop to engage outside delegates.
The French commission recommended that a national criminal tribunal be set up in France to overcome these inherent conflicts of interest. In other words, to create a true separation of powers, which is the hallmark of the standards for dealing with criminal matters in every respectable legal system.
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Recommendation 16.15 of its 2017 Final Report made the same recommendation for Australia, and for similar reasons. In its response to the royal commission’s recommendation, the Holy See stated that the creation of regional penal tribunals was “under consideration,” and noted that some countries might not have the resources to create one.
In response to the French CIASE final report, the Holy See in September 2022 approved the setting up of the 20-member National Canonical Penal Court in France. The court has five lay judges, four of them women. However, the court only has jurisdiction when a case is referred to it by the DDF. The DDF can bypass the court and continue to refer the matter to the bishop to handle.
In August 2023, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (ACBC) produced a report on its actions taken in response to the Australian Royal Commission’s recommendations. In regard to Recommendation 16.15, it noted the setting up of the French tribunal and said: “ACBC will continue to consider the need for and requirements of an Australian tribunal.” The ACBC declined to comment on whether anything had happened since 2023 in setting up the court.
The current system of dealing with child sexual abuse cases through an administrative procedure conducted by the accused’s bishop breaches one of the most fundamental principles of all coherent legal systems. It can be resolved by setting up national independent penal tribunals through bishops’ conferences, as the French have done, but with a proviso that all cases for child sexual abuse be referred to the regional court. In those countries where a lack of resources makes a regional court impractical, the practice of the DDF should require that the administrative procedure be conducted by an independent person with no possibility of conflicts of interest. That should be the normal practice, written into canon law.
While the French canonical court is a step in the right direction, the Holy See is still tiptoeing around the edges of the conflict-of-interest problem.
*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). He 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.