Pope Francis has set up a new Vatican court section to punish bishops who fail to take action against pedophile priests, the Vatican said Wednesday.
The Catholic Church’s reputation has been tarnished by worldwide revelations about sexually abusive priests, and by allegations that, for decades, its hierarchy failed to punish them or even covered up their crimes.
A new Judicial Section within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s disciplinary office, will “judge bishops with regard to crimes of the abuse of office when connected to the abuse of minors,” a statement said.
The reform was recommended to the pope by his advisory panel on child abuse, which includes top cardinals, academics and two campaigners against pedophile priests who were abused by clergymen in their youth.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a support group for victims of sexual abuse by clergy, said it did not go far enough.
“As long as clerics are in charge of dealing with other clerics who commit and conceal child sex crimes, little will change,” SNAP President Barbara Blaine said in a statement.
“Church officials should join us in reforming secular abuse laws so that clerics who hurt kids and hide predators will be criminally charged. If that happens, we’ll be encouraged,” she added.
In recent years, the Vatican has defrocked a record number of priests accused of child molestation and has tightened its criminal laws on the matter, but is not known to have publicly punished any bishop for covering up abuse cases.
In a recent instance, a U.S. bishop convicted of failing to report to civilian authorities a suspected pedophile priest took three years to decide to leave his post. Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph in April.
