ROME (ITALY)
Crux
May 12, 2019
By John L. Allen Jr.
Now that the dust has settled a bit on Vos Estis Lux Mundi, a new set of papal norms governing both reporting and investigation into accusations of clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up released by the Vatican on Thursday, the overall reaction seems reasonably clear.
For most people, it can be expressed this way: So far as they go, these rules seem promising, but we need to see them applied in practice – because experience has shown that in the Catholic Church, as in virtually any other context, a law’s only as important as the will to enforce it.
Since that’s an “only time will tell” situation, here are three other quick thoughts on Vos Estis to chew on while the jury remains out.
Papal populism?
When the Vatican presented the norms to the media Wednesday, they turned again, as they almost always do on the abuse scandals, to the most credible voice they’ve got: Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, formerly the Vatican’s top prosecutor on abuse cases and a man seen as the Elliot Ness of the Church on the issue, with an “untouchable” reputation for integrity.
One revealing moment came when Scicluna was surrounded by a scrum of Italian reporters, speaking in Italian for one of the country’s main broadcast outlets.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.