Bishops 'not liable' over sex priests

US cardinals may find it hard to implement zero tolerance

Bishops cannot, in most cases, be held morally or legally accountable for child abuse committed by priests in their dioceses, according to a Vatican-approved journal.

[The] bishop or superior are neither morally nor judicially responsible for the acts committed by one of their clergy

Reverend Gianfranco Ghirlanda

Published in the Jesuit magazine Civilta Cattolica, the article has been interpreted by analysts in the US as an indication that Vatican officials may disapprove of the response of American bishops to the sex abuse scandal which has rocked their Church.

The 12-page article by Reverend Gianfranco Ghirlanda, dean of the canon law faculty at Rome's Pontificial Gregorian University, follows similar comments by the head of a Vatican council, Archbishop Julian Herranz.

Archbishop Herranz said last month that bishops should not be required hand over records on priests suspected of child abuse to prosecutors.

US Roman Catholic bishops are due to meet next month in Dallas to debate a strategy to tackle a scandal which has seen America's most senior Church leaders under growing pressure to resign over their handling of sex abuse cases.

The crisis was the subject of an unprecedented meeting between the Pope and American cardinals last month.

'Uphill fight'

On Friday, a panel set up by the embattled Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, recommended that clergy who sexually assault children should be barred from their work.

If the bishop fears that the priest could again commit a crime, then he must not entrust to the priest a parish, but must act in a different way

Reverend Gianfranco Ghirlanda

Cardinal Law has been at the centre of the scandal after it was revealed that he transferred a now-defrocked priest to another parish knowing he was a paedophile.

But many believe that the American Church may have a hard time implementing the zero tolerance approach towards sex abuse that is being demanded by Catholics across the country.

"Whatever the US bishops do, it looks like they may have an uphill fight to get some of it approved in the Vatican," the Reverend Thomas Reese, editor of the US Jesuit journal America, was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

Father Ghirlanda says that from a canon law perspective the "bishop or superior are neither morally nor judicially responsible for the acts committed by one of their clergy."

Withholding information

He also argues that a bishop should not inform a community about the past actions of a priest who has abused before if he believes the priest will not abuse again.

The priest "would be totally discredited in front of his parochial community and in fact would be blocked from any effective pastoral action," he writes.

"If the bishop fears that the priest could again commit a crime, then he must not entrust to the priest a parish, but must act in a different way."

Father Ghirlanda says that only if other methods to resolve the problem of an abusing priest are fruitless, the bishop "may move ahead with the judicial process".

However, American legal experts consulted by the Reuters news agency said the article on canon law would have little bearing in US courts.