THE Vatican has published new legislation that extends to lay leaders of Catholic organisations the existing rules for investigating bishops over sex abuse or its cover-up.
Updated procedures for investigating sexual abuse allegations specify that leaders of international Catholic lay associations and movements have the same responsibilities over their members that bishops have over diocesan priests.
A letter, directly sent by Pope Francis, also said that vulnerable adults could be victims of predator priests. The earlier version had only spoken of minors and vulnerable persons.
The amended rules for the document Vos Estis Lux Mundi (You are the light of the world) aim to fill a gap in the Vatican’s effort to improve accountability over sex abuse, following revelations of abuse by lay leaders.
Under the legislation, promulgated in 2019 after a spate of scandals involving high-ranking prelates in the US, Latin America and Europe, every Catholic diocese around the world must maintain a “public, stable and easily accessible” process for reporting allegations of abuse, including by bishops and cardinals, that protects victims and whistleblowers.
“Anything that expands the categories of those who should be protected is to be welcomed,” Oblate Father Andrew Small, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, said.
The dioceses are required to report the allegations immediately to the Vatican, which is supposed to decide within a month whether they warrant an investigation.
The revised rules, which take effect on April 30, will extend that process to lay leaders of Vatican-recognised “international associations of the faithful”.
“The document includes, and continues to include, not only abuse and violence against children and vulnerable adults, but also covers sexual violence and harassment resulting from the abuse of authority,” the Vatican said in its statement.
One thing the updated version did not do, however, was provide mandatory and explicit steps for revealing publicly when a bishop has been asked to or forced to resign because of abuse or covering up abuse allegations.
Many Catholics, including bishops, have called for such public notification after the news reports revealed that a bishop who “resigned” had been sanctioned by the Vatican.
In September, the Vatican confirmed it had placed restrictions on the ministry of Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Dili, East Timor, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for nonviolent resistance to Indonesia’s 24-year occupation of his homeland.
And in November, the French bishops revealed that Bishop Michel Santier of Créteil, who announced in 2021 that he was retiring for health reasons, had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct and disciplined by the Vatican.
Abuse within several Catholic movements have made headlines in the past several years. Perhaps the best known was the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, founded in Peru in 1971. An internal investigation in 2017 found that Luis Fernando Figari, who began the movement and headed it until 2010, and three other high-ranking former members abused 19 minors and 10 adults.
In 2017 the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life banned Figari from living in a Sodalitium community, participating in Sodalitium activities or contacting any Sodalitium member.
Father Small said Pope Francis’ update — declaring “Vos Estis” to be “definitive” and no longer “experimental” — shows that the church still has work to do in implementing its laws to punish abusers and those who cover up abuse.
Expanding its coverage to include leaders of lay movements, he said, is an important part of the church’s global safeguarding efforts.
The definitive text of “Vos Estis,” Father Small said, “is a clear sign that a culture of impunity is over in the church.”
