ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service
May 16, 2019
By Carol Glatz
Pope Francis’ new norms on protecting minors and strengthening accountability are the latest steps in driving home the message that the days of keeping abuse allegations covered up or ignored are over, said the Vatican’s top abuse investigator.
“The good of the church requires condemnation” to the proper authorities when it comes to abuse of minors and abuses of power, said Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, adjunct secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told reporters.
The archbishop spoke to reporters about Pope Francis’ latest apostolic letter, “Vos estis lux mundi” (“You are the light of the world”) at a May 9 news conference. The new document establishes and clarifies norms and procedures for holding bishops and religious superiors accountable when it comes to safeguarding minors as well as abuses carried out against adults with violence, threats or an abuse of authority.
The new norms are important, Archbishop Scicluna said, because they clearly tell people they have an obligation to report already existing crimes, negligence and inappropriate behavior to church authorities.
That obligation “has always been there, but experience shows us that either a closed-shop mentality or a misplaced interest in protecting the institution was hindering disclosure,” he said.
The now-universal law of mandating all clerics, as well as men and women religious, to report to the competent ecclesiastical authorities the abuses of which they become aware is important, he said, “because it makes disclosure the main policy of the church.”
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