(ROME—29 March 2019) Pope Francis issued new child protection legislation on Friday, a little more than a month after promising the new measures at the conclusion of the recent child protection “summit” at the Vatican.
A statement from the interim Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Alessando Gisotti, says, “A month after the conclusion of the Meeting on the Protection of Minors held in the Vatican, a meeting greatly desired by Pope Francis, three very significant documents are being published that respond to the concrete demands expressed by the People of God to address the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors. Announced this past February 24, this is the first important step following the summit of the Episcopal Conferences.”
Gisotti’s statement goes on to say, “Significantly, all three documents — the laws on the protection of minors in Vatican City State, the Motu proprio which applies the norms to the Roman Curia, and the Guidelines for the Vicariate of Vatican City — are signed by the Holy Father.”
“Together,” Gisotti says, “these acts reinforce the protection of minors by strengthening the normative framework.” Gisotti’s statement concludes by saying, “The Holy Father hopes that — thanks also to these norms which pertain to Vatican City State and to the Roman Curia — everyone might develop in their awareness that the Church must always be ever increasingly a safe home for children and vulnerable persons.”
The law is for Vatican City, and concerns the policing, reporting, judicial and penal conduct of the City State and its officials. It is not a change in Canon Law.
Preceded by a Motu proprio that extends the law’s provisions to the Roman curia and takes the place of an official explanatory note, and followed by a series of pastoral guidelines, the law introduces several significant changes, among them:
In addition, the Guidelines for Vatican City provide norms for general conduct with minors, including the following: anyone working with minors should always be visible to others; must report any dangerous behavior; never have direct communications with minors via phone, email, or social media without parents’ express consent.
According to a summary published by Vatican News, the regulations urge general caution. They also forbid asking a child to keep a secret, filming or photographing a child without parents’ express written consent, and using corporal discipline.
The new measures provide that anyone found guilty of abuse will be removed from his post, but they do not specify precisely what will happen before a guilty verdict is pronounced. They do say the accused is to be removed from any pastoral activities within the Vatican City Vicariate.
There are provisions for the protection of victims and their families from retaliation, but nothing specific regarding protection for those with duty to report, or for “whistleblowers” who denounce failures in the system.
A note from the Editorial Director of the Dicastery for Communication, Andrea Tornielli, said the measures, “contain exemplary indications that take into account the most advanced international parameters.”
Tornielli also noted that Pope Francis signed all three documents personally, even though the Motu proprio was the only one of the three documents that strictly required Pope Francis’s signature. “The step taken by Pope Francis,” Tornielli said, “is therefore clear and unequivocal: ‘The protection of minors and vulnerable persons is an integral part of the Gospel message that the Church and all its members are called to spread throughout the world’.”
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