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Sunday, March 24, 2002

By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Last week's declaration by Pope John Paul II that priests who sexually abuse minors have betrayed their ordination is unlikely to quiet critics who say Rome has done little to rid the church of predators.

It was not an order for action, but was added to the end of his annual letter to priests.

"In my opinion, the reasons that the American bishops are mired in a scandal that grew into a crisis is because they have gotten little if any leadership from Rome," said Jason Berry, a Catholic journalist who has tracked the issue of priests who molest minors since 1984.

"The pope, God bless him, has been detached and even impassive on this issue for years."

For years, as some U.S. bishops asked Rome to help them remove offenders from ministry, Vatican officials viewed child molestation as "an American problem," said Nicholas Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer who is dean of the Duquesne University School of Law.

But scandals erupted globally. In 1995, the archbishop of Vienna was forced to resign amid allegations that he had molested children. Belgium and France had scandals. Huge financial verdicts in lawsuits from Canada, Ireland and Australia forced attention to the issue.

"Throughout the entire common law world, every place where you had tort liability and the injured party could sue, you had huge problems," Cafardi said.

"It took awhile for Rome to see the seriousness of the issue because they were used to a different legal system without the huge tort liability. Rome's original response, whenever they were confronted with huge tort verdicts in the United States was, 'Why don't you get the law changed?' It took awhile to sink in that this was a very serious problem that needed to be dealt with seriously."

A few changes

Rome has made incremental changes. A key one allows bishops to petition the Holy See to laicize -- or remove from the obligations of priesthood, including celibacy -- a priest against his will. Previously, a priest could be laicized only if he requested it, and even then, the process was slow and difficult.

Bishop Joseph Adamec of Altoona-Johnstown is one of a handful of bishops to have forcibly laicized a priest. But because he was able to send Rome all of the documentation from the civil trial of the Rev. Francis Luddy. whose molestation of an altar boy brought a $2.6 million judgment against the diocese, he did not have to conduct a lengthy church trial in Altoona, which would otherwise have been required.

Such a trial would "take a long time. It's onerous and bishops are reluctant to do it," he said.

The Vatican office that handled the matter took a month to do it.

"When they had a question, instead of writing a letter, they called me on the phone. That was rather unusual," Adamec said.

The most recent change in Vatican policy came last year.

Previously, cases against diocesan priests were handled first by the diocese, but could be appealed to the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy, and finally to the Vatican's highest court, the Signatura. Now cases will go to a court in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from which there is no appeal to the Signatura.

The new policy says bishops must report probable cases of child molestation to the doctrinal congregation, which will decide whether to allow the local diocese to handle it or take it directly in Rome. These cases concern removing priests from ministry and have no bearing on whether the diocese notifies police.

A high-ranking Vatican official told Catholic News Service, however, that dioceses in the United States would continue to handle their own cases, which will go to the doctrinal congregation only on appeal. Accusations against religious order priests, however, must be sent straight to Rome.

Bishop Donald W. Wuerl believes that the transfer of power to the doctrinal congregation will make it easier to remove molesters. He speaks from experience.

In 1993, the Signatura ordered him to reinstate an accused child molester who had not been convicted of a crime, but who Wuerl believed was guilty. The Signatura suggested that Wuerl was persecuting a faithful priest, and concluded that he had not followed the proper procedure for removing him.

Wuerl refused to reinstate the priest and asked for an almost unheard-of rehearing. Two years later, the Signatura reversed its opinion.

The Signatura can consider only whether proper procedures were used to protect the rights of the priest, Wuerl said. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith can consider the impact of the priest's actions on others.

"This places it in the context of pastoral judgment, not solely of legal judgment," he said.

But Berry said that just three years ago, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith refused to hear a case against a priest whom the pope holds in high esteem, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican founder of the Legion of Christ, a fast-growing, conservative order.

In 1997, nine priests, former priests and former seminarians accused Maciel of molesting them when they were as young as 10. They told the Hartford Courant that since 1978, they had tried and failed to get Rome to investigate.

Maciel and the order have repeatedly denied the allegations and said the accusers were conspiring against him.

In 1998, the accusers filed a case at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It did not charge him directly with sexual abuse, because the canonical statute of limitations had expired. Instead, it accused him of violating the sacrament of penance by granting absolution to victims of his own sexual misconduct. The charge carries the penalty of excommunication.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, the Congregation first agreed to take the case, then dropped it without a hearing or any official explanation.

The Signatura at least took the trouble to hear the Pittsburgh pedophile case -- twice, Berry said.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "refused to allow the accusers in the Maciel case to even give testimony," he said.

"To me, the litmus test on Vatican adherence to the integrity of canon law is the Maciel case. If they do not allow that proceeding to move forward, the integrity of the canonical system is called into question."

A member of the family

The Pittsburgh case contributed to changes in Vatican policy. Because the diocese had not been allowed to have a representative at the first hearing, no one presented the evidence that Wuerl had against the priest. After that case, bishops were allowed to present evidence in cases from their dioceses.

In visits to Rome during the months after the Signatura ordered the priest reinstated, many U.S. bishops protested. John Paul then made his first public statement of concern about priests who sexually abuse minors, and called for a review of canon law on the issue.

As a result, the U.S. bishops got two special exceptions to canon law. One changed the age of adulthood from 16 to 18. Another changed the statute of limitations from five years after the last molestation to the victim's 28 th birthday. Last year, those changes were applied worldwide.

Although the Vatican began to grant forced laicization of priests, most bishops have chosen to remove child molesters in other ways. The church teaches that a priest always remains a priest, but laicization frees him from obligations such as celibacy and obedience.

A simpler process, called administrative leave, bans the priest from ministry and means he can no longer wear a collar, call himself Father or even lead the rosary. But he is not free to marry, and the diocese must pay him.

During Wuerl's 14-year tenure, all priests removed due to accusations of child molestation were first placed on administrative leave. Of the six cases that became public, one priest was later voluntarily laicized.

Another was declared by the Vatican to be "impeded from ministry" due to a mental disorder, although the practical effects are the same as those of administrative leave. One priest who had faced a less serious charge that was dropped due to the statute of limitations was required to retire 15 years early and now lives in a convent.

Wuerl said he was reluctant to forcibly laicize any of the men because priesthood is forever.

"You can fire a member of your family from a job, but you can't fire them from being a member of your family. I can remove a priest from ministry. I cannot remove him from being a priest," Wuerl said.

Wuerl said he doubted that leaving them on the payroll would make the diocese vulnerable to a lawsuit if one of them abused again.

"When someone is no longer assigned by any bishop, when that person is on leave and off on their own, they have left the jurisdiction of the church and can do what they want. I cannot be held responsible for their actions. ... And I am not going to let them starve."

Cafardi believes that Rome should allow another option: A declaration that a child molester was never validly ordained. He argues that ordinations could be annulled in the same way that marriages are. Even though the children of the marriage remain legitimate, a marriage may be declared null if one of the spouses is found to have entered the marriage with problems that made it impossible to live up to the standards of a sacramental marriage.

"I think you could make a very good argument that a person who is a pedophile, who seeks ministry in order to cover or hide or pursue their pedophilia, sought ordination for improper reasons or motivations. And there might be a problem with the validity of their ordination," Cafardi said.

"I think that possibility should be pursued."