On March 26, Pope Francis promulgated
Law N. CCXCVII on the Protection of Minors and of Vulnerable Persons of Vatican City State. It requires any public official of the Vatican City State who has information or a well-founded belief that a minor or other vulnerable person is the victim of abuse is required to report it to authorities, except for information obtained in the sacrament of confession. According to the
Catholic Register:
While few minors are resident in Vatican City State, there are minors in the Sistine Chapel Choir, and there is a pediatric hospital and a minor seminary under Vatican City State jurisdiction....
The new law will now cover all forms of physical and emotional abuse -- not just sexual violence through coercion — as well as serious forms of mistreatment, neglect, abandonment and exploitation against minors, who are below the age of 18, and vulnerable adults.
As reported by
AP:
According to the new Vatican definition, a vulnerable person is anyone who is sick or suffering from a physical or psychiatric deficiency, isn’t able to exercise personal freedom and has a limited capacity to understand or resist the crime.
The issue of whether “vulnerable people” can include seminarians, religious sisters or other adults who are emotionally dependent on clergy has come to the fore in the wake of the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a once high-ranking American cleric who molested seminarians, and revelations of priests and bishops around the world sexually preying on nuns.
The new law covers all personnel who live in or work for the Vatican and any abuse that occurs in the Vatican, the 44-hectare (110-acre) city state in the center of Rome and its other territories, as well as the Holy See’s vast diplomatic corps.
The Vatican’s own ambassadors have figured in some of the most scandalous cases of sex abuse in recent years...
SNAP, an organization supporting clergy abuse victims, issued a
press release generally reviewing the Vatican's action favorably, but complaining that the law requires reporting to internal Vatican officials rather than to independent secular law enforcement officials.
