VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register
BY EDWARD PENTIN 06/04/2016
In the latest effort to stamp out clerical sex abuse, the Vatican announced today that Pope Francis has established new norms to ensure that bishops, or those of equal rank, can be removed when they have been negligent, active or complicit in acts causing grave harm to others or a community.
In a new Apostolic Letter, issued motu proprio, entitled “Come una madre amorevole” (As a Loving Mother), the new norms provide for the removal of bishops (or those equivalent to them in Canon Law) from their offices in cases where they have “through negligence, committed or omitted acts that have caused grave harm to others, either with regard to physical persons, or with regard to the community itself.”
The Letter also clarifies in cases of “abuse of minors or vulnerable adults, it is sufficient that the lack of diligence be grave.”
The director of the Holy See Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, said in an explanatory note that the apostolic letter “insists on the importance of vigilant care for the protection of minors and vulnerable adults, calling for a ‘particular diligence.”
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