Survivors urge Vatican to globalise zero-tolerance abuse policy approved in US

Victims say children everywhere should be protected from predator priests.

Dave West, left, and his brother Larry West, both of Fort Worth, Texas, demonstrate outside the meeting — Dave West, left, and his brother Larry West, both of Fort Worth, Texas, demonstrate outside the hotel where the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (Charlie Riedel/AP)

Survivors of clergy sexual abuse have urged the Vatican to expand the zero-tolerance policy it approved for the US Catholic Church in 2002 to the rest of the world, arguing that children everywhere should be protected from predator priests.

The US norms say a priest will be permanently removed from church ministry based on a single act of sexual abuse that is either admitted to or established under church law.

That “one strike and you’re out” policy in the US has stood out as the toughest in the church.

Jesus on cross — A representation of Christ on the cross (Jessie Wardarski/AP)

It was adopted by US bishops as they scrambled to try to regain credibility following the revelations of abuse and cover-up in Boston documented by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight series.

Survivors from around the world said on Monday there is no reason why the US norms could not be applied universally.

They called for changes in the church’s in-house canon law and reasoned they could be approved since the Holy See already approved the policy for the US church.

“Despite Pope Francis’ repeated calls for zero tolerance on abuse, his words have yet to lead to any real action,” 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 “historic collaboration” between two groups that often talk past one another, given the victims’ deep distrust of the Catholic hierarchy.

The participants in that meeting included the Reverand Hans Zollner, who heads the church’s main academic think tank on safeguarding, the number two at the Vatican’s child protection advisory board Bishop Luis Manuel Ali Herrera and the Gregorian University’s canon law dean, the Reverand Ulrich Rhode as well as diplomats from the US, Australian and other embassies.

There was apparently no one from the Vatican legal office, the 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 church’s canon law — albeit in secret since its cases are never published.

Vatican Pope — Pope Francis (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)

As a result, it was unclear what would become of the proposed policy changes, given the US policy only came about because US bishops pushed the Vatican to approve them, driven by their outraged flocks and insurance companies.

Nicholas Cafardi, a US canon lawyer who was an original member of the US National Review Board that provided input to the 2002 US norms, said globalising that policy into universal church law “would be one of the logical next steps” for Pope Francis to take to continue the fight against abuse.

The proposal faces an uphill battle since the Vatican in recent years has repeatedly insisted on “proportionality” in its sentences for abuse, refusing to apply a one-size-fits-all approach and taking into account cultural differences in countries where abuse is not 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 US, would have resulted in a priest being permanently removed from ministry.