Francis reaffirmed and made permanent the temporary provisions of the 2019 law that were passed in a moment of crisis for the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Saturday updated a 2019 church law aimed at holding senior churchmen accountable for covering up sexual abuse cases, expanding it to cover lay Catholic leaders and reaffirming that vulnerable adults and not just children can be victims of abuse when they are unable to freely consent.
“The Catholic people were promised that would be ‘revolutionary,’ a watershed event for holding bishops accountable. But in four years, we’ve seen no significant housecleaning, no dramatic change,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of, an online resource that has identified 40 bishops investigated globally under the new protocols.
The 2019 law expanded that definition and it is retained in the update, making clear that adults can be rendered vulnerable to abuse as situations present themselves.
as well as minors. Francis himself was implicated in that wave of the scandal, after he dismissed claims by victims of a notorious predator in Chile., summoned the presidents of bishops’ conferences to Rome for a four-day summit on safeguarding and set in motion plans for a new law to hold senior churchmen to account for abuse and cover-ups.
The pope recently warned there was a “clear and present danger” of abuse in areas with fewer financial resources.
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