Pope Francis defended rigor against pedophilia; See main reforms

Pope Francis’ pontificate was marked by actions to face cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, with the implementation of changes and the review of conduct among the religious.

In 2021, the Vatican made the largest renovation in four decades in the Code of Canon Law, changing rules related to crimes committed priests, priests and other clergy members against vulnerable minors and adults.

The new legislation, considered more striking, explicitly included the crime of pedophilia, which was previously inserted in a wider category. Other offenses such as possession of child pornography and corruption of minors were also included in the legislation.

Filippo Iannone, appointed by Pope Francis and head of the Vatican Department who accompanied the project, said that there was an overly negligent interpretation of criminal law, which made it difficult for violators’ liability.

“It is a very necessary reform and long expected,” Iannone said at the time.

After the renovation completed, Pope Francis stressed that the bishops should apply the new norms with rigor, noting that the goal was to reduce the margin of interpretation in the imposition of penalties.

Francisco’s intervention took place a day after a report that pointed out that his predecessor, Bento XVI, did not act on at least four cases of abuse in Munich, Germany, when Pope Emeritus was still archbishop. Benedict XVI acknowledged the errors in a letter written at the age of 94 in February 2022.

Positioning in front of scandals

During his pontificate, Pope Francis also addressed the theme in public pronouncements. At the World Youth Day of 2023 in Portugal, for example, the Argentine stated that the church needed to undergo a continuous process of internal revision and that abuse victims should be heard.

“The crisis calls us to a humble and constant purification, starting from the distressed scream of the victims, which should always be welcomed and heard,” Francisco said during the event.

The statement was made a few months after another report by a Portuguese commission funded by the Church that at least 4,815 minors were victims of abuses committed by clergy members in Portugal over seven decades.

The Catholic Church of Portugal stated that it would financially compensate victims of child sexual abuse and that the amounts paid would be defined on a case by case basis. The posture was criticized by relatives of the victims.

In France, similar cases were also identified. In 2021, a report estimated that more than 200,000 children have been victims of abuse committed by clerics since 1950, a number that could reach 330,000 when considering abusers linked to the church.

About this report. Francisco stated that the document caused “sadness and weighing for the trauma suffered by the victims” and recognized institutional failures in approaching the problem.

Pope Francis and the mistake of John Paul II

Another case that was intensely reported during the pontificate of Francis was the Vatican’s response to historical cases of omission within the church hierarchy.

In 2020, an internal investigation revealed that Pope John Paul II had promoted the American Theodore McCarrick the Washington archbishop, DC, even aware of allegations of sexual abuse against him.

At the time, the document indicated that John Paul II made the decision based on McCarrick’s own denials and a report by American bishops who concluded that the information was “inaccurate and incomplete.”

The investigation also pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI, successor of John Paul II, even asked McCarrick’s resignation in 2005 after new accusations arose. McCarrick, however, remained active in public life until 2018, when he resigned from the Cardinian College.

In 2019, McCarrick was officially dismissed by the Vatican after being found guilty of sexual abuse of minors in a canon judgment.

The investigation also clarified that Francis, when assuming the papacy, initially understood that the accusations against McCarrick had been revised and rejected by John Paul II.

However, when the first accusation of a minor’s sexual abuse came in 2018 against Theodore McCarrick, Francis’ response was “immediate,” according to the report, and he dismissed the former priesthood rider. McCarrick died in April 2025.

Cardinal Prison in Australia

Another case involving pedophilia that took the newspapers during the Francisco papacy took place in Australia. Australian cardinal George Pell, who was a Vatican treasurer, was arrested in 2019 and only left jail the following year.

George Pell became number 3 within the hierarchy of the church, but his career was shaken by five accusations: a case of sexual abuse against a child and another four about committing “indecent acts.”

The cardinal was convicted of a trial that was based on the testimony of a man who said he was abused by him in the 1990s, when he was 13 years old.

According to the report, Pell cornered the teenager after a mass at St. Patrick’s cathedral in Melbourne and forced him to perform sexual acts. The religious has always denied any crime.

Amid the scandal, Pell received a Vatican license to contest the accusations. With the conviction, his mandate as a Vatican treasurer was not renewed. In 2018, he lost his place in the Pope’s short advice, although the Holy See has attributed this to his advanced age.

The cardinal was just over a year old, but was released by a decision by the Supreme Court of Australia in 2020. The understanding was that the jury that condemned him did not act to blame Pell “beyond the benefit of doubt.”

Even so, the court did not declare him innocent of the crimes. George Pell died in 2023 at the age of 81 after a cardiac arrest after hip replacement surgery in Rome.

This content was originally published in Papa Francisco defended rigor against pedophilia; See main renovations on the CNN Brazil website.

Source: CNN Brasil