Victims' groups also want all abusers or suspected abusers to be reported to police, and any abuse-related files handed over to them.
Some have called for priests who hear of abuse during confessions to be forced to report it. The new law stops short of thatVatican — Pope Francis on Thursday passed a measure to oblige those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors, following a global clerical paedophilia scandal.
The “Motu Proprio”, a legal document issued under the pope’s personal authority, declares that anyone who has knowledge of abuse, or suspects it, is “obliged to report [it] promptly” to the Church, using “easily accessible systems”. Under the new measure, every diocese around the world is obliged by June 2020 to create a system for the reporting of sexual abuse by clerics, the use of child pornography and cover-ups of abuse.
Victims’ groups have long called for Francis to put in place concrete measures to tackle clerical child abuse, including immediately firing any cleric found guilty of even a single act of abuse, or of covering it up.
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