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| Pope Francis exchanges his skull cap with one donated to him as he leaves at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, June 10, 2015. |
VATICAN CITY
(AP) -- Pope Francis took the biggest step yet to crack down on bishops
who cover up for priests who rape and molest children, creating a new
tribunal section inside the Vatican to hear cases of bishops accused of
failing to protect their flock.
The
initiative, announced Wednesday, has significant legal and theological
implications, since bishops have long been considered masters of their
dioceses and largely unaccountable when they bungle their job, with the
Vatican stepping in only in cases of gross negligence.
That
reluctance to intervene has prompted years of criticism from abuse
victims, advocacy groups and others that the Vatican had failed to
punish or forcibly remove bishops who moved predator priests from parish
to parish, where they could rape again, rather than report them to
police or remove them from ministry.
The
Vatican said Francis had approved proposals made by his sexual abuse
advisory board, which includes survivors of abuse as well as experts in
child protection policies, that call for a new mechanism by which the
Vatican can receive and examine complaints of "abuse of office" by
bishops, and bring them to trial in a Vatican tribunal.
A
special new judicial section, with permanent staff, will be created
inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "to judge bishops
with regard to crimes of the abuse of office when connected to the abuse
of minors," a Vatican statement said.
Details
must still be worked out, including possible punishments and the
statute of limitations to determine whether old cases of negligence by
bishops dating back 20 or 30 years can now be heard.
The
congregation currently reviews all cases of priests who have abused
minors and the statute of limitations is 20 years, though the
congregation can waive that limit.
"Really
pleased the Holy Father has approved our proposal," commission member
Marie Collins, herself a survivor of abuse, told The Associated Press in
an email.
The main U.S. victims group SNAP
was more cautious, noting that there are bishops currently in office who
have delayed reporting abuse and yet no punishment has ever been meted
out.
"In the face of this widespread denial,
timidity and inaction, let's be prudent, stay vigilant and withhold
judgment until we see if and how this panel might act," said SNAP's
David Clohessy.
The sex abuse scandal exploded
decades ago in the U.S., Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere in large
part because bishops and heads of religious orders moved pedophile
priests around or sent them off for therapy, rather than report the
crimes to police and conduct church trials as canon law requires. Their
aim was to prevent scandal and hold onto their priests at almost any
cost.
In 2001, the Vatican required all
bishops and religious superiors to send abuse cases to Rome in a bid to
crack down on the abusers. Thousands of priests were sanctioned and
hundreds defrocked, but the bosses who enabled them to continue abusing
were never punished.
The Vatican had long
argued that the pope had little power to sanction bishops when they
botched cases of abuse, citing the decentralized structure of the church
and the theological concept of a bishop's relationship to Rome. That
argument served the Vatican well in the face of U.S. lawsuits seeking to
hold the pope ultimately responsible for abusive priests, with the Holy
See insisting that the pope doesn't exercise enough control over
bishops to be held responsible when they covered up for priests who rape
children.
A new tribunal that could enable
the pope to essentially fire bishops, and not just passively accept
their resignations, would seem to undercut the Vatican's argument of a
hands-off pope as far as bishop accountability is concerned.
In
April, Francis accepted the resignation of U.S. bishop Robert Finn, who
had been convicted in a U.S. court of failing to report a suspected
child abuser. It was a sign Francis was cracking down on bishops, but
that was a resignation that Finn offered, not a forcible removal.
The
Vatican's initiative comes as U.S. prosecutors are seeking to hold the
church hierarchy responsible for failing to protect children from harm.
In recent charges brought against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and
Minneapolis, prosecutors said church leaders "turned a blind eye" to
repeated reports of inappropriate behavior by a priest who was later
convicted of molesting two boys. The archdiocese is facing a fine of a
few thousand dollars if convicted. No individuals were named.
The
Vatican said Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the head of Francis' sex abuse
advisory commission, presented the tribunal proposals to Francis'
cardinal advisers this week and they were unanimously approved. Francis
also approved them and authorized funding for full-time personnel to
staff the new office, the Vatican said.
The
announcement came as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was holding
its mid-year meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, and quickly became a topic
of discussion among participants, who included Archbishop John
Nienstedt, head of the recently charged Archdiocese of St. Paul and
Minneapolis.
Bishop Christopher Coyne of
Burlington, Vermont, said U.S. bishops were not alerted ahead of time
about the announcement, and learned of the plan from news reports. He
said the new tribunal would bring welcome clarity to any Vatican review
of bishops' actions.
"This new board ...
provides a structure in which to address issues that may arise involving
questionable behavior or inappropriate responsibility regarding the
reporting of child abuse by a bishop," said Coyne, who was spokesman for
the Archdiocese of Boston from 2002-2005 when the U.S. clergy sex abuse
crisis erupted there then spread nationwide and beyond.
Terrence
McKiernan, president of the online resource BishopAccountability.org,
said the new tribunal was "a promising step" and that it was
particularly significant that the Vatican was allocating senior staff
and funds to it. But he said there were already several well-known cases
of active bishops and cardinals who failed in their duty to protect
children.
"This system will be coping with the
complex interactions of enabling and offending that we see in cases
involving bishops," he said in a statement. "Priests abuse children and
so do bishops - bishops who offend are inevitably enablers, and the
commission's plan must confront that sad fact."
Canon
law already does provide sanctions for bishops who are negligent in
their duties, but the Vatican was never known to have meted out
punishment for a bishop who covered up for an abuser.
The
Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said that with the new
proposals there is now a specific, defined process by which the Vatican
can do so.
