ROME ā Survivors of clergy sexual abuse urged the Vatican on Monday to expand its zero-tolerance policy that it approved for the U.S. Catholic Church in 2002 to the rest of the world, arguing that children everywhere should be protected from predator priests.
The U.S. norms, adopted at the height of the abuse scandal there, say a priest will be permanently removed from church ministry based on even a single act of sexual abuse that is either admitted to or established under church law.
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That āone strike and youāre outā policy in the U.S. has long stood out as the toughest in the church. It is held up by some as the gold standard, by others as excessive and by still others as imperfect but better than most. It was adopted by U.S. bishops as they scrambled to try to regain credibility following the revelations of abuse and cover-up in Boston documented by the Boston Globeās āSpotlightā series.
Since then, the church abuse scandal has erupted globally, and survivors from around the world said Monday thereās no reason why the U.S. norms couldnāt and shouldnāt be applied universally. They called for changes in the churchās in-house canon law and reasoned they could be approved since the Holy See already approved the norms for the U.S. church.
āDespite Pope Francisā repeated calls for zero tolerance on abuse, his words have yet to lead to any real action,ā said Gemma Hickey, a transgender survivor of abuse and the president of the global survivor network Ending Clergy Abuse.
The proposal launched at a press conference was hammered out during an unusual meeting in June in Rome between survivors and some of the Catholic hierarchy's top priestly experts on preventing abuse. It was described by participants at the time as a āhistoric collaborationā between two groups that often talk past one another, given victims' deep distrust of the Catholic hierarchy.
The priestly participants in that meeting included the Rev. Hans Zollner, who heads the churchās main academic think tank on safeguarding; the No. 2 at the Vaticanās child protection advisory board, Bishop Luis Manuel Ali Herrera; and the Gregorian Universityās canon law dean, the Rev. Ulrich Rhode as well as diplomats from the U.S., Australian and other embassies.
However, there was apparently no one from the Vatican legal office, secretariat of state or the discipline section of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which processes all abuse cases worldwide and largely sets policy on applying the churchās canon law ā albeit in secret since its cases are never published.
As a result, it was unclear what would become of the proposed policy changes, given the U.S. norms only came about because U.S. bishops pushed the Vatican to approve them, driven by their outraged flocks and insurance companies.
Nicholas Cafardi, a U.S. canon lawyer who was an original member of the U.S. National Review Board that provided input to the 2002 U.S. norms, said globalizing that policy into universal church law āwould be one of the logical next stepsā for Francis to take to continue the fight against abuse.
But Cafardi, author of āBefore Dallas,ā about the lead-up to the 2002 Dallas bishops' meeting that approved the norms, said that some bishops today bristle at how the policy limits their authority and freedom. And in a telephone interview, he noted that even in the U.S., the norms are only still in place because the U.S. bishops keep formally asking to keep them, which he acknowledged was a āweaknessā in the system.
āIt seems to me that a good protection would be āLetās just make it universal law,āā said Cafardi. āOnce you have that law, you donāt have to worry about the bishops asking for it in country after country. Itās just the law."
However, the proposal faces an uphill battle since the Vatican in recent years has repeatedly insisted on āproportionalityā in its sentences for abuse, refusing to apply a one-size-fits-all approach and taking into account cultural differences in countries where abuse isn't as openly discussed as it is in the West.
That has resulted in seemingly light punishments for even confirmed cases of abuse which, in the U.S., would have resulted in a priest being permanently removed from ministry.
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