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Pope Creates Tribunal for Bishop Negligence in Child Sexual Abuse Cases Pope Creates Tribunal for Bishop Negligence in Child Sexual Abuse Cases
(about 7 hours later)
ROME — Responding to years of complaints from victims of clergy sexual abuse, the Vatican announced on Wednesday that Pope Francis had approved a plan to subject Roman Catholic bishops to judgment and discipline by a new tribunal if they are accused of covering up or failing to prevent misconduct. ROME — Pope Francis has approved the creation of a Vatican tribunal for judging bishops accused of covering up or failing to act in cases of child sexual abuse by priests, an unprecedented step long demanded by victims in the more than three decades that the Roman Catholic Church has publicly dealt with the abuse scandal.
The tribunal is intended to address what victims’ advocacy groups say has been, at best, decades of mishandling of sexual abuse cases involving minors by clergy, and at worst, the covering up of abuses by priests. Bishops aware of complaints of misconduct frequently shifted priests from one parish to another, where patterns of sexual abuse continued. Bishops, regarded as “princes of the church” and sovereign in their dioceses, until now could be disciplined only directly by the pope, but until Francis no pope has publicly confronted or demoted even those bishops accused of gross negligence. Under Francis’ predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI and before him, John Paul II, the Vatican defrocked about 850 priests for sexual abuse and penalized about 2,500 more, but there was no similar judicial mechanism for bishops.
Among their complaints, advocacy groups say the Vatican has refused to systematically discipline clerics who covered up pedophilia crimes. Over the years, the church has adopted a series of measures to address the abuse of children by priests, but critics say that the Vatican has persistently put its reputation over the interests of the victims by refusing to sanction church officials who did not sufficiently protect minors. Advocates for abuse victims had a range of reactions, from skepticism to watchful optimism.
Victims advocates have been pressing for years for the Vatican to hold negligent bishops accountable, but neither Pope John Paul II nor Pope Benedict moved toward instituting mechanisms to do so. Until now, bishops could only be called to account by the pope himself, and that rarely happened in any public way. Francis’ move could affect bishops around the world as awareness of sexual abuse and calls for accountability spread, even to the church in Latin America, Asia and Africa, where the topic is still largely taboo.
The creation of the tribunal now marks a significant step in holding bishops accountable for the abuses of priests under their charge. Francis’s predecessor, Benedict, reorganized and streamlined the Vatican’s procedures for dealing with priests accused of abuse, but action was slow to come. The move by Francis becomes part of what has been a far more frontal, public and assertive stance in addressing an unseemly legacy for the church. It will also bring new scrutiny to a number of bishops currently under investigation over accusations that they covered up abuse by priests; they include Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of Minneapolis and St. Paul, whose archdiocese was indicted last week; Cardinal George Pell of Australia, currently the head of the Vatican’s finances, recently called to testify by a government commission in Australia; and Bishop Robert W. Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, who was convicted on a misdemeanor charge for negligently handling a case involving a pedophile priest. He resigned his post recently, but remains a bishop.
The church has procedures for judging priests accused of abuse, but until now bishops accused of negligence or cover-ups were almost never held accountable by the church itself. A mechanism for holding bishops accountable has been a high priority of the 17-member papal commission on abuse that was also created by Francis. That commission includes two abuse survivors and many laypeople, and is headed by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, who was dispatched to Boston at the height of the abuse scandal there, and two other dioceses before that, to clean up scandals left behind by previous bishops.
In announcing the step, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed that the tribunal’s responsibilities would include questions of omission. “What one should have done and didn’t do,” he said. “This is another kind of responsibility, and shortcoming, and has to be judged in an appropriate way with appropriate rules.” There are many thus far unanswered question as to how the tribunal will conduct its inquiries and proceedings, including what punishments it would impose on bishops found guilty.
Canon law already deals with the question of bishops’ responsibility, he noted. “The issue was whether this was exercised well or poorly. Now we have defined a procedure to determine these cases,” he said. Peter Saunders, one of the two abuse survivors on the commission, said he was pleased that Francis seemed to be listening to their recommendations, but, he said, “When allegations against senior clergy are brought to the tribunal, we’ll see whether it’s working.”
Father Lombardi said the tribunal would also examine some of the abuse cases perpetrated by clergy that were “still pending” at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. “They are still very numerous and have accumulated,” he said. The tribunal would “accelerate” matters, he said, noting that funds had been set aside to bolster the new section, including hiring new staff. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in St. Louis for their semiannual meeting, said they had no advance knowledge of the creation of a new tribunal. (Among those attending the meeting was Archbishop Nienstedt.) In interviews, bishops said that they welcomed the step as a move toward transparency, and would cooperate fully.
Currently, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith deals with questions of abuse. The new tribunal, and new funding, will bolster its resources to address those cases. “It’s a way to organize work, make it more efficient, and faster,” Father Lombardi said. “It’s something new and necessary in the church because it does provide a standard and a policy that holds bishops accountable in the way we’ve held our clergy accountable,” said Bishop Christopher J. Coyne of Burlington, Vt., who served as a spokesman in the archdiocese of Boston at the height of the scandals there in the early to mid-2000s.
The pope will pick a secretary for the tribunal to assist the prefect of the congregation, who will be involved in setting up and organizing the new tribunal. The five-point plan announced on Wednesday says the tribunal will be housed in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that polices adherence to church doctrine and that already handles the cases of priests accused of abuse.
Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, who serves on the pope’s Council of Cardinals, a group that advises the pope on a broad range of issues, outlined the proposals on Monday, the first day the council met. The measures were approved unanimously on Tuesday. “The proposals were put in the table, the council approved them, and the pope said, ‘Let’s go forward in this direction,’ ” Father Lombardi said. The pontiff will choose a secretary, and additional permanent staff members will be hired for the tribunal, said the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. The procedures will be re-evaluated in five years, he said.
The proposals now being put into action set out the procedures for examining complaints of abuse of office by bishops. The complaints will be first investigated by the congregations that the bishops belong to, and then will be judged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Father Lombardi said the tribunal would also examine some of the abuse cases perpetrated by clergy members that were “still pending” at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. “They are still very numerous and have accumulated,” he said. The tribunal would “accelerate” matters, he said, noting that money had been set aside to bolster the new section.
A special new judicial section will be created within 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. Father Lombardi said that the tribunal’s responsibility for judging bishops would include questions of omission. “What one should have done and didn’t do,” he said. “This is another kind of responsibility, and shortcoming, and has to be judged in an appropriate way with appropriate rules.”
The procedures were proposed by a commission that Francis appointed early in his papacy to examine “best practices” for dealing with sexual abuse and suggest reforms. The group, called the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, includes victims of abuse by priests.
“This is the missing link in the church’s response to the abuse crisis,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large of the Jesuit weekly America. “It is a long overdue and delayed response to this problem, but it’s an absolutely indispensible step. This is what everyone was waiting for and all were calling for in all quarters of the church.”
Father Martin suggested that action was slow to come on this front both because there was a “lingering reluctance to hold bishops accountable if they themselves had not committed the abuse” and because — after the Second Vatican Council shifted greater power from Rome to the bishops — of “the traditional authority of bishops over their dioceses.”
Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a support and advocacy group for victims, said in a statement that she suspected that the new panel “won’t make a difference” because it relies on church officials to judge other church officials. She said that a more effective move would be for the church to support the reform of secular laws to strengthen the prosecution of those responsible for abuse.Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a support and advocacy group for victims, said in a statement that she suspected that the new panel “won’t make a difference” because it relies on church officials to judge other church officials. She said that a more effective move would be for the church to support the reform of secular laws to strengthen the prosecution of those responsible for abuse.
“This is a promising first step, that at a stroke provides a structure, personnel, a budget and a brief for actually acting in these matters,” said Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a private Boston-based group that documents cases of sexual abuse by priests. “What’s done with this will be interesting to see.” Mr. McKiernan said in a telephone interview that he was optimistic that the “church’s goal is to handle things better.” Voice of the Faithful, a church reform movement first created to respond to the abuse scandal, said, “These steps are the most promising the Vatican has yet taken.” Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a Boston-based group that documents cases of sexual abuse by priests, called the development encouraging because it “provides a structure, personnel, a budget and a brief for actually acting.”
But he also noted that the current prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller, had one case in his past that he should be held accountable for. “He acted atrociously in one abuse case in Germany; he has a bad track record,” Mr. McKiernan said, citing the case of Peter Kramer, who was found guilty of abusing two boys but was later appointed a pastor, in 2004, by Cardinal Müller, who was then his bishop. The priest was later arrested and accused of abuse again. In the United States, where the church has been struggling with the question of sexual abuse by members of the clergy since the first case of serial abuse first became public in Louisiana in the 1980s, the problem remains far from resolved.
“Müller must publicly acknowledge, which he’s never done, that he made a mistake,” Mr. McKiernan said. “It’s a very awkward cloud that needs to be dispelled.” Last year, there were 37 allegations of sexual abuse made to the church by those who were currently minors, and another 600 “historical allegations” made by those who are older, said Francesco C. Cesareo, chairman of the United States bishops National Review Board on sexual abuse, in his report to the bishops on Wednesday. Six of the current allegations made last year were substantiated, and other cases were still open he said.
Some advocates for abuse victims said many questions remained open: Will the tribunal examine cases retroactively? How will bishops be denounced? Will the tribunal only act if the case is in the public eye? And some note that “fraternal corrections have never worked out. They never want to criticize each other. It’s hard to imagine that they’re the ones that are going to make the system work,” Mr. McKiernan said. Given that, he said, “It should not be concluded that the sexual abuse of minors is a problem of the past that has already been addressed.”
Then, too, “transparency will be even more of an issue with cases involving bishops,” he said in a statement from BishopAccountability.org. The Vatican, it said, “has traditionally been loath to offer any transparency in this area, unless a bishop is disciplined for doctrinal reasons.” “This is the missing link in the church’s response to the abuse crisis,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of the Jesuit weekly magazine America. “It is a long overdue and delayed response to this problem, but it’s an absolutely indispensable step. This is what everyone was waiting for and all were calling for in all quarters of the church.”
Father Martin suggested that action was slow to come because there was a “lingering reluctance to hold bishops accountable if they themselves had not committed the abuse” and because — after the Second Vatican Council shifted greater power from Rome to the bishops — of “the traditional authority of bishops over their dioceses.”