Canon law reforms needed to give victims a voice in the procedure

The Church has its own criminal law. Priests can also be prosecuted for abuse - but canon law provides little room in the proceedings for those affected. The Fribourg canon lawyer Astrid Kaptijn calls for reforms.

The Fribourg canon lawyer Astrid Kaptijn sees a need for change in the way church criminal law deals with abuse. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève on Sunday, Kaptijn called for a different role for victims in church abuse trials. The current rule that only the prosecution and the defendant have an active role in trials needs to be reconsidered, he said, as this leaves no place for the victim from the outset. "It is not specified whether they can present evidence, be given access to files or even just be informed about the conduct of court proceedings," the church law expert said. Representatives of those affected have been demanding for years that aggrieved parties be able to appear as joint plaintiffs in church criminal proceedings as in state ones.

In general, Kaptijn was confident in view of the progress in ecclesiastical legal development over the last two decades: "New norms have been added, whereas for a long time one had the impression that ecclesiastical law was hardly developing at all. Things always progress faster in life than in law." In particular, the canon lawyer welcomed the fact that Pope Francis abolished Papal Secrecy in the prosecution of abuse offences in 2019. However, the impression that canon law serves to protect clerics cannot be entirely dismissed, she said. This applies, for example, to cases in which the good reputation of a priest is at stake. Here, only priests are allowed to play certain roles in criminal proceedings: "One can therefore have the impression that the system protects itself."

Comprehensive reforms by Francis

Despite criticism, the ecclesiastical lawyer considers it sensible that the Church has its own criminal law at all, with which it sanctions acts of abuse. Not only does ecclesiastical criminal law have specific goals such as the correction of the offender: "It also has the special feature that it can dismiss an ordained person from clerical status and thus has the effect that he can no longer exercise his ecclesiastical ministry, which state law cannot do." 

In recent years, Pope Francis has comprehensively reformed ecclesiastical criminal law. In the complete rewriting of the ecclesiastical penal provisions, which came into force in December 2021, abuse offences were also reworded and made more precise, and the procedural law for particularly serious offences was changed. In France, a national ecclesiastical criminal court began its work at the beginning of the year. In Germany, a similar court is planned, but the necessary approval of the Vatican is still pending. Without a specialised court, the respective diocesan church courts are usually responsible.

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Cathcon: Victim impact statements at the end of trial would be a great advance so no one nurses any illusions about the damage done.