The Catholic Church now has guidelines for investigating suspected sexual assaults on minors. At the initiative of Pope Francis, the Vatican released Thursday, July 16, rules regarding the procedure to be followed in this kind of situation, intended for clergymen.

The Argentine Pope, who made the fight against this scourge one of the priorities of his pontificate, had convened in February 2019 an unprecedented summit including 114 presidents of episcopal conferences.

On this occasion, he undertook to "give uniform directives for the Church", evoking above all the legal references already in force at the civil and canonical level.

In fact, the documents published Thursday do not propose new standards, nor are they intended to substitute the justice of the Catholic Church for the judicial procedure, underlines the Vatican.

A form to report crimes

Brought together as a "vade-mecum", they constitute an "instrument" intended to assist the local authorities of the Church "in the delicate task of handling cases involving deacons, priests and bishops when they are accused of abuse of minors, "said Spanish cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, prefect of the Congregation of the Faith in Rome, in a statement.

In particular, the Vatican has drawn up a crime reporting form. The alerted official must inform the identity of the suspected priest, his various ministries, the date of the events and the name of the alleged victim (s), the measures taken by the ecclesiastical authority as well as, in the event of criminal proceedings, the name of the prosecutor and lawyers seized.

The Church has been in turmoil for several years with successive revelations on massive scandals of assaults of a pedophile nature committed for decades by priests or religious and often covered by their hierarchy in several countries, especially in the United States, in Chile or Germany.

In France, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was sentenced in 2019 for his silences over the actions of a former priest of his Lyons diocese, Bernard Preynat, himself convicted of sexual assault on minors. 

But Bishop Barbarin was then released on appeal last January before resigning from his duties as archbishop in March.

>> See: "Sexual abuse in the Church: speech becomes free"

The recently lifted pontifical secret

Pope Francis, according to whom these excesses make the clergy "an instrument of Satan", had taken another step last December by lifting the pontifical secret, while maintaining a minimum of confidentiality.

This secrecy lifted, complaints, testimonies, denunciations must now be forwarded to justice.

The sovereign pontiff has nevertheless repeatedly affirmed that there is an impossible limit to be exceeded: the secrecy of the confession remains absolute, which therefore excludes a denunciation of facts reported by a faithful in the confessional.

With AFP

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