(ITALY)
BishopAccountability.org [Waltham MA]
November 18, 2024
- In rare agreement, victims & top papal advisor push for ‘global one strike’ rule
- Right now, only the U.S. church permanently removes abusive clerics
- In all other countries, abusive priests can be and are put back in parishes
For Immediate Release by BishopAccountability.org- November 18
A watchdog group that tracks the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is endorsing the “one strike and you’re out” proposal that is being released today by an unusual coalition of survivors and church insiders.
BishopAccountability.org announced its support for the proposal being unveiled in Rome this morning by Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA), the world’s leading network of clergy abuse survivors, and Fr. Hans Zollner, the Church’s top anti-abuse expert and head of a safeguarding institute at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
ECA and Zollner are jointly demanding that Pope Francis adopt, on a world-wide basis, the so-called “zero tolerance” norm that the Vatican approved for the United States church in 2002. That norm requires that any priest or deacon found guilty of sexual abuse be removed permanently from ministry.
https://www.usccb.org/resources/Charter-for-the-Protection-of-Children-and-Young-People-2018-final%281%29.pdf [See Essential Norm #8, pp. 23-24]
The Vatican has not approved a similarly strict rule for any other country. As a result, “credibly accused child-molesting clerics are put back on the job, often with no warning to unsuspecting parents and parishioners,” says Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org.
Like ECA and Zollner, BishopAccountability.org wants the Pope to make the U.S. norm universal church law.
Currently, the church has a two-tier system for abusive clergy, she says.
“By allowing just one country to have a ‘one strike and you’re out’ rule, the Pope in effect is saying that the Church values the safety of children in the U.S. more than that of children in Mexico, the Philippines, the Congo, and elsewhere. This is institutionalized discrimination, plain and simple.”
Because the Vatican refuses to release detailed abuse data, it is impossible to say how many of the thousands of accused priests it has processed have been found guilty and returned to ministry.
But it’s clear that the Vatican’s continued laxness toward abusive priests is playing out tragically around the world today, especially in countries where the Church is dominant and victims have little legal recourse.
In Poland in 2019, a Wall Street Journal investigation found nine priests who had been convicted criminally of child sex crimes still in active ministry. In Venezuela, convicted child molesters were still active as Catholic priests in 2022, according to a Washington Post report.
In Mexico in 2021, the departing papal nuncio, Archbishop Franco Coppola, told a reporter that out of 194 Mexican priests recently found guilty of sex abuse, 134 were removed from the ministry or priesthood, but the remaining 60 guilty priests – 30% of the total – would be considered for reinstatement. The church had deemed their sexual crimes against children to be “mild and non-serial,” Coppola explained.
BishopAccountability.org has done in-depth research of abuse cases in Mexico, the Philippines, Argentina, Ireland, Belgium, and Chile. In those countries, the group has found dozens of priests in active ministry despite substantive allegations and sometimes canonical or criminal convictions.
This isn’t to say that the US church’s “zero tolerance” norm is a fix-all, according to Barrett Doyle.
“The U.S. church’s rule is weak and sporadically enforced,” she says. “It removes a priest from ministry only after he is convicted under canon law, and that’s a high bar to clear, because canon law is heavily biased in favor of the accused.”
But even a weak version of “one strike and you’re out” makes children safer. The U.S. church’s norm has made it harder for bishops to keep dangerous priests in ministry.
“The Vatican approved this norm once; they can do it again, this time for every country. Today’s proposal is a no-brainer. It’s not radical. It’s a small, sensible step forward, and children around the world will be safer because of it,” Barrett Doyle said.
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CONTACT:
Anne Barrett Doyle, Co-Director
BishopAccountability.org
barrett.doyle@comcast.net
About BishopAccountability.org
Launched in 2003 by lay Catholics in Boston, BishopAccountability.org is a Waltham-based, comprehensive archive and data center focused on the worldwide sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. It has compiled an online database of 7,800 publicly accused US priests. Its online library contains hundreds of thousands of church records, legal documents, and media reports. Its mission is to give the public one-stop access to information about the crisis throughout the world. An independent non-profit, BishopAccountability.org is not a victim’s group, does not advocate specific church reforms, and is not affiliated with any advocacy or religious group.