It was the sort of headline which only appears in the nightmares of Vatican press officers. “Pope quietly trims sanctions for paedophile priests,” Associated Press reported last week.
The reality was that Francis had overruled several recommendations by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department charged with disciplining priests guilty of abuse. Instead of being laicised, these priests were sentenced to a lifetime of prayer and penance, and were merely removed from active ministry.
“In some cases, the priests or their high-ranking friends appealed to Francis for clemency by citing the Pope’s own words about mercy in their petitions,” said the report.
One of the troubling cases which has come to light is that of Fr Mauro Inzoli, whose punishment under canon law was reduced by the Pope, but who was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for sex abuse of children as young as 12.
The Pope’s approach to offending priests is arguably not surprising, given that he has made mercy the focus of his pontificate. But it can seem inconsistent with his severe statements on the need to combat child abuse. On the feast of the Holy Innocents in December, Francis wrote to bishops across the world urging them to “adhere, clearly and faithfully, to ‘zero tolerance’” of sexual abuse of children.
The Pope’s defenders have pointed out that assigning an abuser to a life of prayer and penance does not pose any danger to children and can enable the Church to continue monitoring the culprit’s movements and behaviour.
Cardinal Seán O’Malley, one of the most respected voices on the clerical abuse crisis, told the Boston Globe that Francis’s decision raised the important question of whether it was preferable to expel abusive priests entirely “with no possibility of monitoring his activity or having any kind of control over his behaviour”, or keeping them within the Church as priests where they could be watched.
“This is the issue – not that the Holy Father was returning anyone to ministry or backing down on zero tolerance,” Cardinal O’Malley said. “He has been very, very clear about that.”
Nevertheless, critics have argued that allowing an abuser to retain the title of “Father” implies a warped sense of mercy and a complete absence of justice for abuse survivors.
The current safeguarding guidelines in England and Wales, for example, state that if a priest is convicted of a criminal offence against children and is sentenced to 12 months or more in prison, “it would normally be right to initiate the process of laicisation. Failure to do so would need to be justified.”
Rocio Figueroa, a former Vatican official who blew the whistle on sex scandals within the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae movement, told AP that allowing a priest to avoid laicisation amounts to a “golden exile, where he can live comfortably with all his needs taken care of”.
Marie Collins, the abuse survivor who resigned last week from the Pontifical Council for Protecting Minors citing the Vatican’s inertia on tackling abuse, said that weakening sanctions against offending priests sent the wrong message. “While mercy is important, justice for all parties is equally important,” she said in an email. “If there is seen to be any weakness about proper penalties, then it might well send the wrong message to those who would abuse.”
It was Benedict XVI who introduced tighter sanctions against clerical abusers while he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. During his pontificate, an estimated 800 priests were laicised.
In his book-length interview with Peter Seewald, Light of the World, Benedict said that mercy must be balanced with justice. “After the mid-1960s,” he said, “The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather, a Church of love; she must not punish. Thus the awareness that punishment can be an act of love ceased to exist. This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people.”
Pope Francis has said that in God there can be no conflict between justice and mercy. But he has also promised to dedicate his papacy to “binding up the wounds of the faithful.”
There is no deeper wound than that inflicted by an abusive priest. In the case of clerical abuse, authorities must show justice, not just for its own sake, but for the sake of the victims.
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