Pope Francis updates church law aimed at seeking more accountability on sex abuse cases, expanding it to cover lay Catholic leaders and reaffirming that vulnerable adults can also be abuse victims
The law also mandates all church personnel to report allegations of clergy abuse in-house, though it refrains from mandating reporting to the police.
That law had been praised at the time for laying out precise mechanisms to investigate complicit bishops and religious superiors, but its implementation has been uneven and the Vatican has been criticised by abuse survivors for continued lack of transparency about the cases. The new law makes clear that adults can be rendered vulnerable to abuse even occasionally, as situations present themselves. That is significant given resistance in the Vatican to expanding its abuse rules to cover adults.
Francis himself was implicated in that wave of the scandal, after he dismissed claims by victims of a notorious predator in Chile. The law contained precise timelines to initiate investigations if allegations were well-founded, and that has been retained with some modifications.
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