The Curia’s Safeguarding Commission is currently updating its policy to reflect a new Vatican law on sex abuse reporting, a spokesperson has told The Malta Independent.
The revised version will be published later this year.
Last month, Pope Francis issued the “motu proprio” “Vos Estis Lux Mundi” (“You are the light of the world”) to help the Catholic Church safeguard its members from abuse and hold its leaders accountable.
The groundbreaking law requires all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-up by their superiors to church authorities.
The new church law provides whistle-blower protections for anyone making a report and requires all dioceses around the world to have a system in place to receive the claims confidentially. And it outlines procedures for conducting preliminary investigations when the accused is a bishop, cardinal or religious superior.
The law makes the world's 415,000 Catholic priests and 660,000 religious sisters mandated reporters. That means they are required to inform church authorities when they learn or have "well-founded motives to believe" that a cleric or sister has engaged in sexual abuse of a minor, sexual misconduct with an adult, possession of child pornography — or that a superior has covered up any of those crimes.
The law doesn't require them to report to police. The Vatican has long argued that doing so could endanger the church in places where Catholics are a persecuted minority. But it does for the first time put into universal church law that they must obey civil reporting requirements where they live, and that their obligation to report to the church in no way interferes with that.
Previously such reporting was left up to the conscience of individual priests and nuns. Now it is church law. There are no punitive measures foreseen if they fail to report, and similarly there are no sanctions foreseen if dioceses, for example, fail to comply. But bishops and religious superiors could be accused of cover-up or negligence if they fail to implement the provisions, or retaliate against priests and nuns who make reports.
The law defines the crimes that must be reported as: performing sexual acts with a minor or vulnerable person; forcing an adult "by violence or threat or through abuse of authority, to perform or submit to sexual acts," and the production, possession or distribution of child pornography. Cover-up is defined as "actions or omissions intended to interfere with or avoid" civil or canonical investigations.
Asked what response the law had had locally in terms of incoming reports, a spokesperson for the Malta Diocese said “With regards to the latest Motu Proprio by Pope Francis, the Safeguarding Commission is currently updating its policy to reflect the new Law.”
The spokesperson said that, in January 2015 the Safeguarding Commission committed to publishing an annual report detailing its work, including the statistics of complaints received each year. “The Commission has met its commitment each year and will keep doing so in future,” the spokesperson said.
Presenting the 2017 report last October, the commission said three substantiated cases of child abuse had been registered that year.
The head of the Safeguarding Commission, Andrew Azzopardi, had said that the cases had been perpetrated by a diocesan priest, a religious priest, and a layperson, all of whom are being investigated by the police.
Restrictions on their pastoral activities were also imposed, Azzopardi said.
By the end of 2017, the commission concluded risk assessments on another 16 complaints brought to its attention. Ten of these, Azzopardi said, were unsubstantiated. A further three were found to be unfounded while three were not related to abuse but were still referred to other entities for appropriate action.